ESSAYS 



ON 



ECCLESIASTICAL SUBJECTS. 



CHRISTIAN INSTITUTIONS 



dfeatjs n €it\mm\iul iubjttts 



BY 

AETHUE PENEHYN STANLEY, D.D. 

DEAN OF WESTMINSTER 

AUTHOR OF "HISTORY OF THE JETVISH CHURCH " "LIFE OF DR. ARNOLD" 

" SINAI AND PALESTINE" ETC. 



NEW YORK 

HARPER & BROTHERS, FRANKLIN SQUARE 

1881 
(Stereotyped and Printed by S. W. Green's Son) 



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PEEFACE. 



This volume, though not pretending to completeness, forms 
a connected whole. The Essays touch on a variety of topics, 
and were written at long- intervals of time, but they are united 
by the common bond which connects the institutions to which 
they relate. It may be well to state here some of the general 
conclusions which they suggest. 

1. Underneath the sentiments and usages which have accu- 
mulated round the forms of Christianity, it is believed that 
there is a class of principles — a Religion as it were behind the 
religion — which, however dimly expressed, has given them 
whatever vitality they possess. It is not intended to assert 
that these principles were continuously present to the minds of 
the early Christians, or that they were not combined with much 
heterogeneous matter which interfered with their develop- 
ment. But it is maintained that there is enough in them of 
valuable truth to give to these ancient institutions a use in 
times and circumstances most different from those in which 
they originated. If this be shown to be the case, the main pur- 
pose of these Essays will have been accomplished. The Sacra- 
ments — the Clergy — the Pope — the Creed — will take a long 
time in dying, if die they must. It is not useless to indicate a 
rational point of view, from which they may be approached, 
and to show the germs which, without a violent dislocation, 
may be developed into higher truth. 

2. The entire unlikeness of the early days of Christianity (or, 
if we prefer so to put it, of the times of the Roman Empire) to 
our own is a point which such a study will bring out. It has 
been truly said to be a great misfortune in one who treats of 



Vi PBEFACE. 

theological subjects to have the power of seeing likenesses with- 
out the power of seeing differences. In practical matters the 
power of seeing likenesses is certainly a, rare and valuable gift. 
The divergencies and disputes of theologians or theological 
parties have been in great measure occasioned by the want of 
it. But in historical matters the power of seeing differences 
cannot be too highly prized. The tendency of ordinary men 
is to invest every age with the attributes of their own time. 
This is specially the case in religious history. The Puritan 
idea that there was a Biblical counterpart to every — the most 
trivial — incident or institution of modern ecclesiastical life, and 
that all ecclesiastical statesmanship consisted in reducing the 
varieties of civilization to the crudity of the times when Chris- 
tianity was as yet in its infancy, has met with an unsparing 
criticism from the hand of Hooker. The same fancy has been 
exhibited on a larger scale by the endeavor of Roman Cath- 
olic and High Church divines to discover their own theories of 
the Papacy, the Hierarchy, the administration of the Sacra- 
ments, in the early Church. Such a passion for going back to 
an imaginary past, or transferring to the past the peculiarities 
of later times, may be best corrected by keeping in view the 
total unlikeness of the first, second, or third centuries to any- 
thing which now exists in any part of the world. 

3. This reluctance to look the facts of history in the face has 
favored the growth of a vast superstructure of fable. It used 
to be said in the early days of the revival of mystical and ec- 
clesiastical Christianity at Oxford that it was impossible to con- 
ceive that the mediaeval system could ever have been devel- 
oped out of a state of things quite dissimilar. " That is the 
fundamental fallacy of the ecclesiastical theory," it was re- 
marked in answer by a distinguished statesman. " It is for- 
gotten how very soon, out of a state of things entirely oppo- 
site, may be born a religious system which claims to be the 
genuine successor. Witness the growth of ' the Catholic and 
Apostolic Church,' with its hierarchy and liturgy, out of the 
bald Presbyterianism and excited utterances of Edward Irving 
and his companions." A like example might be pointed out 
in the formation of the Society of Friends, as founded by Wil- 
liam Penn and his associates, with the sober self-control which 
has ever since characterized them, out of the enthusiastic, strange, 



PREFACE. vii 

indecorous acts of George Fox. Another might be found in 
the succession which, though with some exaggeration, has been 
traced, of the Oxford movement to the Wesleyan or so-called 
Evangelical movement of the last generation. 

Such a transformation may have occurred with regard to 
Christianity. If its earlier forms were quite unlike to those 
which have sprung out of them, it may be instructive to see in 
various instances the process by which the change took place. 
It does not follow that the earlier form was more correct than 
the later ; but it is necessary to a candid view of the subject to 
know that it existed. 

4. Another point which is disclosed in any attempt to go 
below the surface of ecclesiastical history is the strong contrast 
between the under-current of popular feeling and the manifesta- 
tions of opinion in the published literature of the time. Es- 
pecially is this brought to light in the representations of the 
Roman catacombs — hardly to be recognized in any work of any 
Christian writer of the time, and yet unquestionably familiar to 
the Christians of that age. Forms often retain an impress of 
the opinions of which they were the vehicles, long after the 
opinions themselves have perished. 

5. There is an advantage in perceiving clearly the close com- 
munity of origin which unites secular and sacred usages. It is 
evident that the greater part of the early Christian institutions 
sprang from social customs which prevailed at the time. It is 
satisfactory to see that this community of thought, which it 
has been the constant effort of later times to tear asunder, was 
not unknown to the primitive epoch. It has been the tendency 
of the lower and more vulgar forms of religious life to separate 
the secular and the sacred. It will always be the tendency of 
the loftier forms of religious thought to bring them together. 
Such a union is, to a certain extent, exhibited in these early 
centuries. 

6. It has been attempted to find on all these points a better 
and not the darker side of these institutions. This is a princi- 
ple which may be pushed to excess. But it is believed to be 
safer and more generous than the reverse policy. No doubt 
every one of these forms has a magical or superstitious element. 
But even for the purpose of superseding those barbarous ele- 
ments, it is wiser to dwell on the noble and spiritual aspect 



viii PEE FACE. 

which the same forms may wear ; and with the purpose of rec- 
onciling the ultimate progress of civilization with Christianity, 
it is the only course which can be advantageously pursued. 

1. Finally, two conclusions are obvious. First, that which 
existed in the early ages of the Church cannot be deemed in- 
compatible with its essence in later ages. Secondly, that which 
did not exist in primitive times cannot be deemed indispensa- 
ble to the essence of the Church, either late or early. 

Deanery, Westminster: 

December, 1880. 



CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER L 

BAPTISM. 

Baptism in the Apostolic age 

Baptism in the Patristic age . 

I. The Meaning of Baptism: 

1. As an act of cleansing 

2. As a plunge ...... 

3. As an assimilation of the Christian character 
:'.!. Changes in Baptism: 

1. The opinions concerning it . 

2. The form of administration 



CHAPTER H. 

THE EUCHARIST. 

The time of its first institution 

1. Its connection with Judaism 

2. Selection of the most universal elements 

3. Parting meal ..... 

4. Its future meaning 



CHAPTER III. 



THE EUCHARIST IN THE EARLY CHURCH 



I. Its festive character 
H. Its evening character 
iH. The posture of the recipient . 
IV. The elements ..... 
The bread .... 

The wine and water 
The fish ..... 
V. The table ..... 
VI. The posture and position of the minister 
VII. Reading of the Scriptures; the ambones 
, T IH. The Homily .... 
IX The kiss of peace .... 
X. The Liturgy .... 

The offering of the bread and wine . 
The Lord's Prayer . 



CHAPTER IV. 

THE EUCHARISTIC SACRIFICE 

I. The ancient idea of Sacrifice . 
II. Substitution of new ideas .... 

1. Prayer and praise .... 

2. Charitable efforts ..... 

3. Self-sacrifice ..... 
HI. Exemplified in the Gospel History . 

IV . Exemplified in the Christian Church . 
V. Exemplified in the Eucharist 



CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER V. 

THE REAL PRESENCE. 

The spiritual and moral presence of the Redeemer 
Reasons for its rejection by the Catholic Church 
1. Misuse of parabolical language 
II. Prevalence 01 magic .... 

III. Onion of physical with moral ideas . 

IV. Mixture of ideas in the Lutheran Church 
V . Mixture of ideas in the English Church 



PAGE 

. 73 
74 

. 75 
76 

. 79 



CHAPTER VI. 

THE BODY AND BLOOD OF CHRIST. 

I. Use of the words in St. John's Gospel . . . . . .93 

IL Use of the words in the Synoptic Gospels ..... 95 

1. The Body, the essence of Christ's character . . . .96 

2 The Body, the Christian community ..... 100 

3. The Blood of Christ the innermost essence of Christ's character . 103 

Love 105 

Attestation . . . . . . . . ,108 

Enthusiasm ........ 109 

Cleansing . . . . . . . . *■ . 110 



CHAPTER VTL 

ABSOLUTION. 

I. Binding and loosing 

Remitting and retaining . 
n. Universal application or the words 

III. Use of the words in the Ordination Service 

IV. Application of the words to confession and absolution 



119 
121 
122 
IX? 
129 



CHAPTER VHI. 



ECCLESIASTICAL VESTMENTS 



I. Antiquarian import .... 

H. Dress of the ancient world . 

1. The shirt ...... 

2. The shawl 

3. The overcoat ..... 
HI. Their secular origin .... 

Their transformation . . ... 

Their contrasts .... 

Importance of maintaining their indifference 
The Ornaments' Rubric 
Attention to matters of real importance 



135 
136 
136 
138 
139 
141 
143 
149 
152 
153 
158 



CHAPTER IX. 

THE BASILICA. 



Its form ...... 

Its adaptation to Christian worship 
The popular character of Christian worship 
The secular origin of Christian usages . 
The use of art . 



164 



CONTENTS. 



XI 



CHAPTER X. 



THE CLERGY. 

L The facts of the Institution 

1. The identity of Bishop and Presbyter 

2. Origin of the orders . 

8. Vestiges of primitive usages 
4. The Deacons 

6. Appointment 

8. Forms of ordination . 

7. Their ministrations 
IL Growth of the clergy 

Origin of episcopacy . 
III. Origin of the clergy 



PAGE 

171 
J 73 

178 
174 
175 
175 
175 
176 
177 
178 



CHAPTER XL 

THE POPE. 

The Pope:— 

Compared with the Emperor and the Sultan .... 182 

I. As the representative or Christian antiquity .... 184 

H. As successor of the Emperors of Rome . . . . .186 

m. As Italian prince ........ 192 

IV. As " the Pope " 194 

V. As the chief ecclesiastic ....... 201 

VI. His mixed character . . . . . . . .203 

Note. His posture in tie Communion ..... 207 



CHAPTER XH. 

THE LITANY. 



I. Its origin . 
H. Its contents 
IH. Its form 



214 
217 
219 



CHAPTER Xm. 



THE ROMAN CATACOMBS. 



I. Their structure .... 
H. Their pictures .... 
HI. Their characteristic ideas 

1. Cheerfulness 

2. Choice of heathen subjects . 

3. Gracefulness of art 

IV. Christian ideas . . . 

1. Good Shepherd: 

(a) Connection with heathen ideas 
lb) Joyous aspect 

(c) Latitude 

(d) Simplicity . 

2. The Vine .... 

(a) Joyousness . 

(b) Wide diffusion . 

(c) Variety 

V. Epitaphs ..... 

1. Their simplicity 

2. Their idea of rest 

8. The idea of immortality . 
VI. Conclusion ..... 



227 



229 
230 
231 
£31 
233 
234 
234 



237 



238 



240 
241 



Xll 



CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER XTV. 

THE CREED OP THE EARLY CHRISTIANS. 

PAGE 

The Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost . . . . . .243 

I. Meaning of the words: 244 

1. The Father 245 

2. The Son 246 

3. The Spirit 251 

H. Their union ......... 253 

Their separation ......... 255 

HE. Conclusion ......... 257 

CHAPTER XV. 

THE LORD'S PRAYER. 

1. Its universality ......... 260 

2. Its Liturgical form 261 

3. Its varieties .......... 262 

4. Its selection from Rabbinical writings ..... 263 

5. Its brevity .264 

6. Its contents ......... 265 

7. Its conclusion . ......... 267 

CHAPTER XVI. 

THE COUNCIL AND CREED OP CONSTANTINOPLE. 

Gregory Nazianzen ......... 270 

Maximus .......... 273 

Funeral of Athanaric . . . . . . . . .277 

Deposition of Gregory . . . . . . .282 

Election of Nectarius ......... 285 

End of Council . . .287 

Creed of Constantinople ........ 288 

Councils of Ephesus and Chalcedon ...... 294 



CHAPTER XVH. 

THE TEN COMMANDMENTS. 



I. The Ten Commandments 

1. Israelite arrangements 

2. Christian arrangements 
II. Their importance 

III. Their spirit . 

1. First Commandment 

2. Second Commandment 

3. Third Commandment 

4. Fourth Commandment 

5. Fifth Commandment 

6. Sixth Commandment . 

7. Seventh Commandment 

8. Eighth Commandment 

9. Ninth Commandment 

10. Tenth Commandment 
rv. The Two Great Commandments 

V. The Eight Beatitudes . 
VI. The Eleventh Commandment 

ADDENDA 

INDEX . , • . 



307 
308 
309 
310 
310 
311 
311 
313 
313 
314 
314 
315 
316 
316 
317 
318 



CHRISTIAN INSTITUTIONS. 



CHAPTER I. 

BAPTISM. 



What was Baptism in the Apostolic age? It coincided 
with a vast religious change both of individuals and of nations. 
Multitudes of men and women were seized with one Bapt j sm in 
common impulse, and abandoned, by the irresist- theApos- 
ible conviction of a day, an hour, a moment, their ° 1C ase ' 
former habits, friends, associates, to be enrolled in a new 
society under the banner of a new faith. That new society 
was intended to be a society of "brothers;" bound by ties 
closer than any earthly brotherhood, filled with life and energy 
such as fall to the lot of none but the most ardent enthusiasts, 
yet tempered by a moderation and a wisdom such as enthu- 
siasts have rarely possessed. It was moreover a society swayed 
by the presence of men whose words even now cause the heart 
to burn, and by the recent recollections of One, whom " not 
seeing they loved with love unspeakable." Into this society 
they passed by an act as natural as it was expressive. The 
plunge into the bath of purification, long known among the 
Jewish nation as the symbol of a change of life, had been re- 
vived with a fresh energy by the Essenes, and it received a 
definite signification and impulse from the austere prophet 
who derived his name from the ordinance.* This rite was 
retained as the pledge of entrance into a new and universal 
communion. In that early age the scene of the transaction 
was either some deep wayside spring or well, as for the Ethio- 
pian, or some rushing river, as the Jordan, or some vast reser- 

* For John the Baptist, see Lectures on the Jewish Church, iii. 399. 



2 CHRISTIAN INSTITUTIONS. 

voir, as at Jericho* or Jerusalem, whither, as in the Baths of 
Caracalla at Rome, the whole population resorted for swim- 
ming or washing. 

The earliest scene of the immersion was in the Jordan. 
That rushing river — the one river of Palestine — found at last 
its fit purpose. Although no details are given of the external 
parts of the ceremony, a lively notion may be formed of the 
transaction by the scene which now takes place at the bathing 
of the pilgrims at Easter.j- Their approach to the spot is by 
night. Above is the bright Paschal moon, before them moves 
a bright flare of torches, on each side huge watch-fires break 
the darkness of the night, and act as beacons for the successive 
descents of the road. The sun breaks over the eastern hills 
as the head of the cavalcade reaches the brink of the Jordan. 
The Sacred River rushes through its thicket of tamarisk, 
poplar, willow, and agnus-castus, with rapid eddies, and of a 
turbid yellow color, like the Tiber at Rome, and about as 
broad. They dismount, and set to work to perform their 
bath ; most on the open space, — some further up amongst the 
thickets ; some plunging in naked, most, however, with white 
dresses, which they bring with them, and which, having been 
so used, are kept for their winding-sheets. Most of the 
bathers keep within the shelter of the bank, where the water is 
about four feet in depth, though with a bottom of very deep 
mud. The Coptic pilgrims are curiously distinguished from 
the rest by the boldness with which they dart into the 
main current, striking the water after their fashion alternately 
with their two arms, and playing with the eddies, which hurry 
them down and across as if they were in the cataracts of their 
own Nile; crashing through the thick boughs of the jungle 
which, on the eastern bank of the stream, intercepts their 
progress, and then recrossing the river higher up, where they 
can wade, assisted by long poles which they have cut from the 
opposite thickets. It is remarkable, considering the mixed 
assemblage of men and women, in such a scene, that there 
is so little appearance of levity or indecorum. A primitive 

* Compare the account of the young courtiers of Herod plunging in the tank 
at Jericho. Joseph. Ant. xv. 33. The word ftanritGO is used for it. 

t This account is taken from Sinai and Palestine, chap. 7. I have hardly 
altered it, lest the original impression should be lost. 



BAPTISM. 3 

domestic character pervades in a singular form the whole 
transaction. The families which have come on their single 
mule or camel now bathe together, with the utmost gravity; 
the father receiving from the mother the infant, which has 
been brought to receive the one immersion which will suffice 
for the rest of its life, and thus, by a curious economy of 
resources, save it from the expense and danger of a future 
pilgrimage in after-years. In about two hours the shores are 
cleared; with the same quiet they remount their camels and 
horses; and before the noonday heat has set in, are again 
encamped on the upper plain of Jericho. Once more they may 
be seen. At the dead of night, the drum again wakes them 
for their homeward march. The torches again go before; 
behind follows the vast multitude, mounted, passing in pro- 
found silence over that silent plain — so silent that, but for the 
tinkling of the drum, its departure would hardly be perceptible. 
The troops stay on the ground to the end, to guard the rear, and 
when the last roll of the drum announces that the last soldier 
is gone, the whole plain returns again to its perfect solitude. 

Such, on the whole, was the first Baptism. We are able to 
track its history through the next three centuries. The rite 
was still in great measure what in its origin it had been almost 
universally, the change from darkness to light, from evil to 
good; the "second birth" of men from the corrupt society of 
the dying Roman Empire into the purifying and for the most 
part elevating influence of the living Christian Church. In 
some respects the moral responsibility of the act must have 
been impressed upon the converts by the severe, sometimes the 
life-long, preparation for the final pledge, more deeply than by 
the sudden and almost instantaneous transition which charac- 
terized the Baptism of the Apostolic age. But gradually the 
consciousness of this "questioning of the good conscience 
towards God" was lost in the stress laid with greater and 
greater emphasis on the " putting away the filth of the flesh." 

Let us conceive ourselves present at those extraordinary 
scenes, to which no existing ritual of any European Church 
offers any likeness. There was, as a general rule, but one 
baptistery* in each city, and such baptisteries were apart 

* At Rome there was more than one. 



4 CHRISTIAN INSTITUTIONS. 

from the churches. There was but one time of the year when 
c l br tio ^ e r ^ e was administered — namely, between Easter 
in the Pa- and Pentecost. There was but one personage who 
tnstic age. cou id administer it — the presiding officer of the com- 
munity, the Bishop, as the Chief Presbyter was called after 
the first century. There was but one hour for the ceremony ; 
it was midnight. The torches flared through the dark hall 
as the troops of converts flocked in. The baptistery * con- 
sisted of an inner and an outer chamber. In the outer 
chamber stood the candidates for baptism, stripped to their 
shirts; and, turning to the west as the region of sunset, 
they stretched forth their hands through the dimly lit chamber, 
as in a defiant attitude towards the Evil Spirit of Darkness, 
and speaking to him by name, said : " I renounce thee, Satan, 
and all thy works, and all thy pomp, and all thy service." 
Then they turned, like a regiment, facing right round to the 
east, and repeated, in a form more or less long, the belief in 
the Father, the Son, and the Spirit, which has grown up into 
the so-called Apostles' Creed in the West, and the so-called 
Nicene Creed in the East. They then advanced into the 
inner chamber. Before them yawned the deep pool or reser- 
voir, and standing by the deacon, or deaconess, as the case 
might be, to arrange that all should be done with decency. 
The whole troop undressed completely as if for a bath, and 
stood up,f naked, before the Bishop, who put to each the 
questions, to which the answer was returned in a loud and dis- 
tinct voice, as of those who knew what they had undertaken. 
They then plunged into the water. Both before and after the 
immersion their bare limbs were rubbed with oil from head to 
foot; "l they were then clothed in white gowns, and received, 
as token of the kindly felling of their new brotherhood, the kiss 
of peace, and a taste of honey and milk ; and they expressed 
their new faith by using for the first time the Lord's Prayer. 
These are the outer forms of which, in the Western Churches, 

* In the most beautiful baptistery in the world, at Pisa, baptisms even in the 
Middle Ages only took place on the two days of the Nativity and .the Decol- 
lation of John the Baptist, and the nobles stood in the galleries to witness the 
ceremony. See Dr. Smith's Dictionary of Christian Antiquities, i. pp. 160, 
161. 

+ Bingham, xi. 2, § 1, 2. 

X Ibid. xi. 9, § 3, 45; xii. 1, 4. Possibly after immersion the undressing and 
the anointing were partial. 



BAPTISM. 5 

almost every particular is altered even in the most material 
points. Immersion has become the exception and not the rule. 
Adult baptism, as well as immersion, exists only among the 
Baptists. The dramatic action of the scene is lost. The 
anointing, like the bath, is reduced to a few drops of oil in the 
Roman Church, and in the Protestant churches has entirely dis- 
appeared. What once could only be administered by Bishops, 
is now administered by every clergyman, and throughout the 
Roman Church by laymen and even by women. We propose 
then to ask what is the residue of the meaning of Baptism 
which has survived, and what we may learn from it, and from 
the changes through which it has passed. 

I. The ordinance of Baptism was founded on the Jewish — 
we may say the Oriental — custom, which, both in ancient and 
modern times, regards ablution, cleansing of the hands, the 
face, and the person, at once as a means of health and as a sign 
of purity. We shall presently see that here as elsewhere the 
Founder of Christianity chose rather to sanctify and elevate 
what already existed than to create and invent a new form for 
Himself. Baptism is the oldest ceremonial ordinance that 
Christianity possesses; it is the only one which is inherited 
from Judaism. It is thus interesting as the only ordinance of 
the Christian Church which equally belonged to the merciful 
Jesus and the austere John. Out of all the manifold religious 
practices of the ancient law — sacrifices, offerings, temple, taber- 
nacle, scapegoat, sacred vestments, sacred trumpets — He chose 
this one alone; the most homely* the most universal, the most 
innocent of all. He might have chosen the peculiar Nazarite 
custom of the long tresses and the rigid abstinence by which 
Samson and Samuel and John had been dedicated to the ser- 
vice of the Lord. He did nothing of the sort. He might have 
continued the strange and painful rite of circumcision. He, 
or at least His Apostles rejected it altogether. He might have 
chosen some elaborate ceremonial like the initiation into the 
old Egyptian and Grecian mysteries. He chose instead what 
every one could understand. He took what, at least in East- 
ern and Southern countries, was the most delightful, the most 
ordinary, the most salutary, of social observances. 

1. By choosing water and the use of the bath, He indicated 
one chief characteristic of the Christian religion. Whatever 



6 CHRISTIAN INSTITUTIONS. 

else the Christian was to be, Baptism * — the use of water — • 
(i showed that he was to be clean and pure, in body, 
a cleansing soul, and spirit; clean even in body. Cleanliness is 
nte - a duty which some of the monastic communities of 

Christendom have despised, and some have even treated as a 
crime. But such was not the mind of Him who chose the 
washing with water for the prime ordinance of His followers. 
"Wash and be clean" was the prophet's admonition of old to 
the Syrian whom he sent to bathe in the river Jordan. It was 
the text of the one only sermon by which a well-known geol- 
ogist of this country was known to his generation. " Cleanli- 
ness next to godliness" was the maxim of the great religious 
prophet of England in the last century, John Wesley. With 
the Essenes, amongst whom Baptism originated, we may almost 
say that it was godliness, j If the early Christians had, as we 
shall see, their daily Communion, the Essenes, for the sake of 
maintaining their punctilious cleanliness, had even more than 
daily Baptism. Every time that we see the drops of water 
poured over the face in Baptism, they are signs to us of the 
cleanly habits which our Master prized when He founded the 
rite of Baptism, and when, by His own Baptism in the sweet 
soft stream of the rapid Jordan, He blessed the element of 
water for use as the best and choicest of God's natural gifts to 
man in his thirsty, weary, wayworn passage through the dust 
and heat of the world. But the cleanness of the body, in the 
adoption of Baptism by Christ and His forerunner, was meant 
to indicate the perfect cleanness, the unsullied purity of the 
soul; or, as the English Baptismal Service quaintly expresses 
it, the mystical washing away of sin — that is, the washing, 
cleansing process that effaces the dark spots of selfishness and 
passion in the human character, in which, by nature and by 
habit, they had been so deeply ingrained. It was a homely 
maxim of Keble, "Associate the idea of sin with the idea of 
dirt." It indicates also that as the Christian heart must be 



* This is the meaning of the frequent reference to " water " in St. John's 
writings. As in John vi. 54, the phrases "eating" and "drinking," "flesh 
and blood," refer to the spiritual nourishment of which the Eucharist, never 
mentioned in the Fourth Gospel, was the outward expression, so in John iii. 5, 
the word " water" refers to the moral purity symbolized by Baptism, which 
in like manner (as a universal institution) is never mentioned in that Gospel. 

t Lectures on the Jewish Church, iii. 397. 



BAPTISM, 7 

bathed in an atmosphere of purity, so the Christian mind must 
be bathed in an atmosphere of truth, of love of truth, of per- 
fect truthfulness, of transparent veracity and sincerity. What 
filthy, indecent talk or action is to the heart and affections, 
that a lie however white, a fraud however pious, is to the mind 
and conscience. Sir Isaac Newton is said by his friends to 
have had the whitest soul that they ever knew. That is the 
likeness of a truly Christian soul as indicated by the old bap- 
tismal washing: the whiteness of purity, the clearness and 
transparency of truth. 

There was one form of this idea which continued far down 
into the Middle Ages, long after it had been dissociated from 
Baptism, but which may be given as an illustration of the 
same idea represented by the same form. The order of 
knighthood in England, of which the banners hang in King 
Henry the Seventh's Chapel in Westminster Abbey, and which 
is distinguished from all the other orders as the " most honora- 
ble," is called the Order of the Bath. This name was given 
because in the early days of chivalry, the knights, who were 
enlisted in defence of right against wrong, truth against false- 
hood, honor against dishonor, on the evening before they were 
admitted to the Order, were laid in a bath * and thoroughly 
washed, in Order to show how bright and pure ought to be the 
lives of those who engage in noble enterprises. Sir Galahad, 
amongst King Arthur's Knights of the Round Table, is the 
type at once of a true ancient Knight of the Bath and of a true 
Apostolic Christian. 

My good blade carves the helms of men, 

My tough lance thrusteth sure; 
My strength is as the strength of ten, 

Because my heart is pure. 

2. This leads us to the second characteristic of the act of 
Baptism. " Baptism" was not only a bath, but a plunge — an 
entire submersion in the deep water, a leap as into 
the rolling sea or the rushing river, where for the a phmge.* 18 
moment the waves close over the bather's head, and 
he emerges again as from a momentary grave ; or it was the 



* To " dub " a knight is said to be taken from "the dip," "doob" in the 
bath. Evelyn saw the Knights in their baths {Diary, April 19, 1661). 



8 CHRISTIAN INSTITUTIONS. 

shock of a shower-bath — the rush of water passed over the 
whole person from capacious vessels, so as to wrap the recipient 
as within the veil of a splashing cataract.* This was the part 
of the ceremony on which the Apostles laid so much stress. It 
seemed to them like a burial of the old former self and the 
rising up again of the new self. So St. Paul compared it to 
the Israelites passing through the roaring waves of the Red 
Sea, and St. Peter to the passing through the deep waters of 
the flood. " We are buried," said St. Paul, " with Christ by 
baptism at his death ; that, like as Christ was raised, thus we 
also should walk in the newness of life." f Baptism, as the 
entrance into the Christian society, was a complete change 
from the old superstitions or restrictions of Judaism to the 
freedom and confidence of the Gospel ; from the idolatries and 
profligacies of the old heathen world to the light and purity of 
Christianity. It was a change effected only by the same effort 
and struggle as that with which a strong swimmer or an ad- 
venturous diver throws himself into the stream and struggles 
with the waves, and comes up with increased energy out of 
the depths of the dark abyss. 

This, too, is a lesson taught by Baptism which still lives, 
although the essence of the material form is gone. There is 
now no disappearance as in a watery grave. There is now no 
conscious and deliberate choice made by the eager convert at 
the cost of cruel partings from friends, perhaps of a painful 
death. It is but the few drops sprinkled, a ceremony under- 
taken long before or long after the adoption of Christianity has 
occurred. But the thing signified by the ancient form still 
keeps before us that which Christians were intended to be. 
This is why it was connected both in name and in substance 
with " Conversion." In the early Church the careful dis- 
tinction which later times have made between Baptism, Regen- 
eration, Conversion, and Repentance did not exist. They all 
meant the same thing. In the Apostolic age they were, as we 
have seen, absolutely combined with Baptism. There was 
then no waiting till Easter or Pentecost for the great reservoir 
when the catechumens met the Bishop — the river, the wayside 

* See Dr. Smith's History of Christian Antiquities, vol. i. p. 169. 
t Rom. vi. 4: 1 Cor. x. 2: 1 Pet, iii. 20, 21. 



BAPTISM. 9 

well were taken the moment the convert was disposed to turn, 
as we say, the new leaf in his life. And even afterwards, in 
the second century, Regeneration (7ra\iyyev€(Tia), which 
gradually was taken to be the equivalent of Baptism, was, in 
the first instance, the equivalent of Repentance and Conver- 
sion.* A long and tedious controversy about thirty years 
ago took place on the supposed distinction between these 
words. Such a controversy would have been unintelligible to 
Justin Martyr or Clement of Alexandria. j- But the common 
idea which the words represent is still as necessary, and has 
played as great a part in the later history of the Church as it 
did at the beginning. J Conversion is the turning round from 
a wrong to a right direction ; Repentance (fieravoia) is a 
change of thoughts and feelings w r hich is always going on in 
any one who reforms himself at all ; Regeneration is the growth 



* As a general rule, in the writings of the later Fathers, there is no doubt 
that the word which we translate "Regeneration" is used exclusively for 
Baptism. But it is equally certain that in the earlier Fathers it is used for 
Repentance, or, as we should now say, Conversion. See Clem. Rom. i. 9; Jus- 
tin. Dial, in Tryph. p. 231, b. d. ; Clemens Alex, (apud Eus. H. E. iii. 23), Strom. 
lib. ii. 8, 425, A. 

t The Gorham litigation of 1850, which turned on the necessity of " an un- 
conditional regeneration in Baptism/ ' has now drifted into the limbo of ex- 
tinct controversies. The epigram of Sir George Rose and the judgment of 
Bishop Thirlwall had indeed sealed its doom at the time. I quote a sentence 
from each: 

" Bishop and vicar, 
Why do you bicker 

Each with the other, 
When both are right, 
Or each is quite 
As wrong as the other?" 

The Gorham Judgment Versified. 
"In no part of the controversy was it stated in what sense the word ' Re- 

feneration ' was understood by either party. In no other instance has there 
een so great a disproportion between the intrinsic moment of the fact and 
the excitement which it has occasioned." — Thirlwall, Remains, i. 153, 158. 

But it was not till some years afterwards that the wit of the lawyer and 
judgment of the Bishop were confirmed from an unexpected quarter. Dr. 
Mozley, afterwards Regius Professor of Divinity at Oxford, had in his calmer 
moments reviewed the whole question, and decided that the decision of the 
Privy Council, so vehemently attacked at the time by his school as subversive 
of the Christian faith, was right, and that its opponents had wasted their fears 
and their indignation in behalf of a phantom. See his two works on The 
Auqustinian Doctrine of Predestination, 1855, and on Baptismal Regenera- 
tion, 1856. 

% It has been often remarked that examples of such total renewal of char- 
acter are very rare outside of the influence of Christianity. But (not to speak 
of Mohammedan and Indian instances) a striking instance, corresponding 
almost entirely to the conversions in Christendom, has been pointed out— that 
of Polemo, under the teaching of Xenocrates. See Horace, Satires, II. iii. 
254, with the annotations from Valerius 31aximus and Diogenes Laertius. 



10 CHRISTIAN INSTITUTIONS. 

of a second character, always recurring, though at times with 
a more sudden shock. With us these changes are brought 
about by a thousand different methods ; education, affliction, 
illness, change of position in life, a happy marriage, a new field 
of usefulness — every one of these gives us some notion of the 
early Baptism in its better and more permanent side, and in 
every one of these that better side of the early Baptism may 
be reproduced. We lie down to sleep, and we wake up and 
find ourselves new creatures, with new hopes, new affections, 
new interests, new aspirations. Every such case which we 
have known, every such experience in ourselves, helps us better 
to understand what Baptism once was ; and the recollection of 
that original Baptism helps us better to apply to ourselves the 
language of the Bible concerning it — to that which now most 
nearly resembles it. We must, if we would act in the spirit of 
the Apostolic Baptism, be not once only, but " continually," 
" mortifying," that is, killing, drowning, burning out our selfish 
affections and narrow prejudices; and not once only, but 
" daily," proceeding, — daily renewed and born again in all vir- 
tue and godliness of living, all strength and uprightness of 
character. 

3. And this brings us to the third characteristic of the early 
Baptism. "Baptism," says the English Baptismal Service, 
" doth represent unto us our Christian profession, which is to 
follow Christ and to be made like unto him." This is the 
element added to the Baptism of John. In the first two 
characteristics of Baptism which we have mentioned, water as 
signifying cleanliness of body and mind, and immersion as 
indicating the plunge into a new life, the Baptism of John and 
the Baptism of Christ are identical. John's Eaptism, no less 
than Christian Baptism, was the Baptism of purity, of regen- 
eration, " of remission of sins." * But Christ added yet this 
further; that the new atmosphere into which they rose 
was to be the atmosphere of the Spirit of Christ. This 
was expressed to the Christians of the first centuries in two 
ways: First, when they came up from the waters, naked and 
shivering, from the cold plunge into the bath or river, they 
were wrapped round in a white robe, and this suggested the 

* Luke iii. 3. 



BAPTISM. 11 

thought that the recipients of Baptism put on — that is, were 
clothed, wrapped, enveloped in — the fine linen, white and 
clean, which is the goodness and righteousness of Christ and 
of His saints, not by any fictitious transfer, but in deed and in 
truth ; His character, His grace, His mercy, His truthfulness 
were to be the clothing, the uniform, the badge, the armor of 
those who by this act enrolled themselves in His service. And, 
secondly, this was what made Baptism especially a " Sacrament." 
It is common now to speak of the Eucharist as " the Sacra- 
ment." But in the early ages it was rather Baptism which 
was the special Sacrament (sacr amentum), the oath, the pledge 
in which, as the soldiers enlisting in the Roman army swore a 
great oath on the sacred eagles of allegiance to the Emperor, 
so converts bound themselves by a great oath to follow their 
Divine Commander wherever He led them. And this was fur- 
ther impressed upon them by the name in which they were 
baptized. It was, if not always, yet whenever we hear of its 
use in the Acts of the Apostles, in the name of the " Lord 
Jesus. 11 * Doubtless the more comprehensive form in which 
Baptism is now everywhere administered in the threefold 
name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, soon super- 
seded the simpler form of that in the name of the Lord Jesus 
only. But the earlier use points out clearly how, along with 
the all-embracing love of the Universal Father, and the all- 
penetrating presence of the Eternal Spirit, the historical, per- 
sonal, gracious, endearing form of the Founder of the Faith 
was the first and leading thought that was planted in the mind 
of the early Christians as they rose out of the font of their 
first immersion to enter on their new and difficult course. 

It has thus far been intended to show what is the essential 
meaning of the early Baptism which has endured through all 
its changes. And it is in full accordance with the primitive 
records of Christianity to dwell on these essentials as distinct 
from its forms. It is not by the water, much or little, but by 
the Spirit (as it is expressed in the Fourth Gospel),f that the 

* Acts ii. 38, viii. 16, x. 48. The form of the name of the Father, Son, and 
Holy Ghost, though found in early times, was not universal. Cyprian first 
and Pope Nicholas I. afterwards acknowledged the validity of Baptism "In 
the name of the Lord Jesus." See Dr. Smith's Dictionary of Christian Anti- 
quities, vol. i. p. 162. 

t John iii. 5-8. 



12 CHRISTIAN INSTITUTIONS. 

second birth of man is wrought in the heart. It is not by the 
putting away the natural filth of the outward flesh,* but (as it 
is expressed in the First Epistle of St. Peter) by the inward 
questioning of a good conscience towards God, that Baptism 
can ever save any one. It was not by the act of baptizing, 
but by proclaiming the glad tidings of the kingdom of God, 
that the world was converted. Jesus, f we are told, never 
baptized, and Paul thanked God that, with a few insignificant 
exceptions, he baptized none of the Corinthians. 

II. But there is the further instruction to be derived from a 
nearer view of the changes through which the forms passed. 

1. First there are the curious notions which have congre- 
gated round the ceremony, and which have almost entirely 
. . . passed away. There was the belief in early ages 

Ancient . . •/ © 

opinion on that it was like a magical charm, which acted on the 
Baptism, persons w ho received it, without any consent or 
intention either of administrator or recipient, as in the case of 
children or actors performing the rite with no serious inten- 
tion. There was also the belief that it wiped away all sins, 
however long they had been accumulating, and however late it 
was administered. This is illustrated by the striking instance 
of the postponement of the baptism of the first Christian 
Emperor Constantine, who had presided at the Council of 
Nicsea, preached in churches, directed the whole religion of the 
empire, and yet was all the while unbaptized till the moment 
of his death, when, in the last hours of his mortal illness, the 
ceremony was performed by Eusebius of Nicomedia. There 
was also the belief, in the third and fourth centuries almost as 
firmly fixed as the corresponding belief in regard to the Eucha- 
rist, that the water was changed into the blood of Christ. 

There was the yet more strange persuasion that no one 
could be saved unless he had passed through the immersion of 
Baptism. It was not the effect of divine grace upon the soul, 
but of the actual water upon the body, on which those ancient 
Baptists built their hopes of immortality. If only the person 
of a human being be wrapt in the purifying element, he was 
thought to be redeemed from the uncleanness of his birth. 



* See Professor Plumptre's Notes on 1 Peter iii. 21. 
t John iv. 2; 1 Cor. i. 14-16. . 



BAPTISM. 13 

The boy Athanasius throwing water in jest over his playmate 
on the sea-shore performed, as it was believed, a valid baptism ; 
the Apostles in the spray of the storm on the sea of Galilee, 
the penitent thief in the water that rushed from the wound of 
the Crucified, were imagined to have received the baptism 
which had else been withheld from them. And this " washing 
of water" was now deemed absolutely necessary for salvation. 
No human being could pass into the presence of God hereafter 
unless he had passed through the waters of baptism here. 
" This," says Vossius, " is the judgment of all antiquity, that 
they perish everlastingly who will not be baptized, when they 
may." From this belief followed gradually, but surely, the 
conclusion that the natural end not only of all heathens, but 
of all the patriarchs and saints of the Old Testament, was in 
the realms of perdition. And, further, the Pelagian contro- 
versy drew out the mournful doctrine, that infants, dying 
before baptism, were excluded from the Divine presence — the 
doctrine when expressed in its darkest form, that they were 
consigned to everlasting fire. At the close of the fifth century 
this belief had become universal, chiefly through the means of 
Augustine. It was the turning-point of his contest with 
Pelagius. It was the dogma from which nothing could induce 
him to part. It was this which he meant by insisting on 
"the remission of original sin in infant baptism." In his 
earlier years he had doubted whether, possibly, he might not 
leave it an open question ; but in his full age, " God forbid," 
said he, " that I should leave the matter so." The extremest 
case of a child dying beyond the reach of baptism is put to 
him, and he decides against it. In the Fifth Council of Car- 
thage, the milder view is mentioned of those who, reposing on 
the gracious promise, " In my. Father's house are many man- 
sions," trusted that among those many mansions, there might 
still be found, even for those infants who, by want of baptism, 
were shut out from the Divine presence, some place of shelter. 
That milder view, doubtless under Augustine's influence, was 
anathematized. Happily, this dark doctrine was never sanc- 
tioned by the forma? Creeds of the Church. On this, as on 
every other point connected with the doctrine of Baptism, 
they preserved a silence, whether by design, indifference, or 
accident, we know not. But among the individual Fathers 



14 CHRISTIAN INSTITUTIONS. 

from the time of Augustine it seems impossible to dispute the 
judgment of the great English authority on Baptism : " How 
hard soever this opinion may seem, it is the constant opinion 
of the ancients." * « I am sorry," says Bishop Hall, and we 
share his sorrow, " that so harsh an opinion should be graced 
with the name of a father so, reverend, so divine — whose sen- 
tence yet let no man plead by halves." All who profess to go 
by the opinion of the ancients and the teaching of Augustine 
must be prepared to believe that immersion is essential to the 
efficacy of baptism, that unbaptized infants must be lost for- 
ever, that baptized infants must receive the Eucharist, or be 
lost in like manner. For this, too, strange as it may seem, 
was yet a necessary consequence of the same materializing 
system. " He who held it impossible " (we again use the 
words of Bishop Hall) " for a child to be saved unless the bap- 
tismal water were poured on his face, held it also as im- 
possible for the same infant unless the sacramental bread were 
received in his mouth. And, lest any should plead differ- 
ent interpretations, the same St. Augustine avers this later 
opinion also, touching the necessary communicating of chil- 
dren, to have been once the common judgment of the Church 
of Rome." f 

Such were the doctrines of the Fathers on Infant Baptism, 
— doctrines so deeply affecting our whole conceptions of God 
and of man, that, in comparison, the gravest questions of late 
times shrink into insignificance — doctrines so different from those 
professed by any English, we may almost add any European, 
clergyman, of the present day, that had the Pope himself ap- 
peared before the Bishop of Hippo, he would have been re- 
jected at once as an unbaptized heretic. 

It is a more pleasing task to trace the struggle of Christian 
goodness and wisdom, by which the Church was gradually de- 
livered from this iron yoke. No doctrine has ever arisen in 
the Church more entirely contrary to the plainest teaching of 
its original documents. In the Old Testament, especially in the 
Psalms,| — where the requisites of moral life are enumerated as 
• 

* Wall's History of Infant Baptism, vol. i. p. 200. In this work, and in 
Bingham's Antiquities, will be found most of the authorities for the state- 
ments in the text. 

t Bishop Hall's Letter to the Lady Honoria Hay. 

X See Psalms xv. xix. xxiv. cxix. 



BAPTISM. 15 

alone necessary to propitiate the Divine favor, — it is needless 
to say that Baptism is never mentioned. In the New Testa- 
ment the highest blessings are pronounced on those who, 
whether children or adults,* had never been baptized. Even 
in the Patristic age itself (in its earlier stage) the recollection 
of the original freedom of Christianity had not quite died out. 
Tertullian must have accepted with hesitation, if he accepted 
at all, the universal condemnation of unbaptized children. 
Salvian, who acknowledged freely the virtues of the Vandal 
heretics, must have scrupled to repudiate the virtues of the 
unbaptized heathens. No General or Provincial Council, ex- 
cept the Fifth of Carthage, ventured to affirm any doctrine on 
the subject. The exception in behalf of martyrs left an open- 
ing, at least in principle, which would by logical consequence 
admit other exceptions, of which the Fathers never dreamed. 
The saints of the Old Testament were believed to have been 
rescued from their long prison-house by the hypothesis of a 
liberation effected for them through the Descent into Hell. 
But these were contradictions and exceptions to the prevailing 
doctrine ; and the gloomy period which immediately followed 
the death of Augustine, fraught as it was with every imagin- 
able horror of a falling empire, was not likely to soften the 
harsh creed which he had bequeathed to it ; and the chains 
which the " durus pater infantum " had thrown round the souls 
of children were riveted by Gregory the Great. At last, how- 
ever, with the new birth of the European nations the humanity 
of Christendom revived. One by one the chief strongholds of 
the ancient belief yielded to the purer and loftier instincts (to 
use no higher name) which guided the Christian Church in its 
onward progress, dawning more and more unto the perfect day. 
First disappeared the necessity of immersion. Then, to the 
Master of the Sentences we owe the decisive change of doc- 
trine which delivered the souls of infants from the everlasting 
fire to which they had been handed over by Augustine and 
Fulgentius, and placed them, with the heroes of the heathen 
world, in that mild Limbo or Elysium which is so vividly de- 
scribed in the pages of Dante. Next fell the practice of ad- 



* Matt. v. 1-11; vii. 24, 25, viii. 10, 11, xii. 50, xviii. 3-5, xxv. 34-39; Mark x. 14; 
Luke xv. 32; John xiv. 23; Acts x. 4, 44. 



16 CHRISTIAN INSTITUTIONS. 

ministering to them the Eucharistic elements. Last of all, in 
the fourteenth century, the strong though silent protest against 
the magical theory of Baptism itself was effected in the post- 
ponement of the rite of Confirmation, which, down to that 
time, had been regarded as an essential part of Baptism, and, 
as such, was administered simultaneously with it. An inef- 
fectual stand was made in behalf of the receding doctrine of 
Augustine by Gregory of Rimini, known amongst his " seraphic " 
and " angelic " colleagues by the unenviable title of " Tormentor 
Infantum ;" and some of the severer Reformers, both in Eng- 
land and Germany, for a few years clung to the sterner view. 
But the victory was really won ; and the Council of Trent, no 
less than the Confession of Augsburg and the Thirty-nine Ar- 
ticles, has virtually abandoned the position by which Popes 
and Fathers once maintained the absolute, unconditional, mys- 
tical efficacy of sacramental elements on the body and soul of 
the unconscious infant. The Eastern Church, indeed, with its 
usual tenacity of ancient forms, still immerses, still communi- 
cates, and still confirms its infant members. But in the West- 
ern Church the Christian religion has taken its more natural 
course ; and in the boldness which substituted a few drops of 
water for the ancient bath, which pronounced a charitable 
judgment on the innocent babes who die without the sacra- 
ments, which restored to the Eucharist something of its origi- 
nal intention, and gave to Confirmation a meaning of its own, 
by deferring both these solemn rites to years of discretion, we 
have at once the best proof of the total and necessary diver- 
gence of modern from ancient doctrine, and the best guarantee 
that surely, though slowly, the true wisdom of Christianity will 
be justified of all her children. 

"The constant opinion of the ancients" in favor of the un- 
conditional efficacy and necessity of Baptism has been happily 
exchanged for a constant opinion of the moderns, which has 
almost, if not entirely, spread through Christendom. No doubt 
traces of the old opinion may occasionally be found. It is 
said that a Roman peasant, on receiving a remonstrance for 
spinning a cockchafer, replied, with a complete assurance of 
conviction, " There is no harm in doing it. Non e cosa battez- 
zata" — "It is not baptized stuff." "They are not baptized 
things " is the reply which many a scholastic divine would have 



BAPTISM. 17 

Inade to the complaint that Socrates and Marcus Aurelius were 
excluded from Paradise. The French peasants, we are told, 
regard their children before baptism simply as animals.* Even 
in the English Church we sometimes hear a horror expressed 
by some excellent clergymen at using any religious words over 
the graves of unbaptized persons. The rubric which, in the 
disastrous epoch of 1662, was for the first time introduced into 
the English Prayer Book, forbidding the performance of its 
burial service over the unbaptized, which till then had been 
permitted, still, through the influence of the Southern Convo- 
cation, maintains its place. But these are like the ghosts of 
former beliefs — lingering in dens and caves of the Church, vis- 
iting here and there their ancient haunts, but almost everywhere 
receding, if slowly yet inevitably, from the light of day. 

Such changes on such a momentous subject are amongst the 
most encouraging lessons of ecclesiastical history. They show 
how variable and contradictory, and therefore how capable of 
improvement, has been the theology of the Catholic as well as 
of the Protestant Churches, and how pregnant, therefore, are 
the hopes for the future of both. 

2. We now pass to the changes in the form itself. For the 
first thirteen centuries the almost universal practice of Baptism 
was that of which we read in the New Testament, immersion 
and which is the very meaning of the word " bap- j ™ sSrink- 
tize," f — that those who were baptized were plunged, ling, 
submerged, immersed into the water. That practice is still, as 
we have seen, continued in Eastern Churches. In the Western 
Church it still lingers amongst Roman Catholics in the solitary 
instance of the cathedral of Milan ; amongst Protestants in the 
numerous sect of the Baptists. It lasted long into the Middle 
Ages. Even the Icelanders, who at first shrank from the 
water of their freezing lakes, were reconciled when they found 
that they could use the warm water of the Geysers. And the 
cold climate of Russia has not been found an obstacle to its 
continuance throughout that vast empire. Even in the Church 
of England it is still observed in theory. The rubric in the 
Public Baptism for Infants enjoins that, unless for special 

* Round my House, by P. G. Hamerton, pp. 254, 263. 
t It is the meaning of the word taufen (" dip "). 



18 CHRISTIAN INSTITUTIONS. 

causes, they are to be dipped, not sprinkled. Edward the 
Sixth and Elizabeth were both immersed. But since the be- 
ginning of the seventeenth century, the practice has become 
exceedingly rare. With the few exceptions just mentioned, 
the whole of the Western Churches have now substituted for 
the ancient bath the ceremony of letting fall a few drops of water 
on the face. The reason of the change is obvious. The prac- 
tice of immersion, though peculiarly suitable to the Southern 
and Eastern countries for which it was designed, was not found 
seasonable in the countries of the North and West. Not by 
any decree of Council or Parliament, but by the general senti- 
ment of Christian liberty, this remarkable change was effected. 
Beginning in the thirteenth century, it has gradually driven the 
ancient Catholic usage out of the whole of Europe. There is 
no one who would now wish to go back to the old practice. 
It followed, no doubt, the example of the Apostles and of 
their Master. It has the sanction of the venerable Churches of 
the early ages, and of the sacred countries of the East. Baptism 
by sprinkling was rejected by the whole ancient Church 
(except in the rare case of death-beds or extreme necessity) as 
no baptism at all. Almost the first exception was the heretic 
Novatian. It still has the sanction of the powerful religious 
community which numbers amongst its members such noble 
characters as John Bunyan, Robert Hall, and Havelock. In a 
version of the Bible which the Baptist Church has compiled 
for its own use in America, where it excels in numbers all but 
the Methodists, it is thought necessary, and on philological 
grounds it is quite correct, to translate "John the Baptist" by 
" John the Immerser." It has even been defended on sanitary 
grounds. Sir John Floyer dated the prevalence of consump- 
tion to the discontinuance of baptism by immersion.* But, 
speaking generally, the Christian civilized world has decided 
against it. It is a striking example of the triumph of common- 
sense and convenience over the bondage of form and custom. 
Perhaps no greater change has ever taken place in the outward 
form of Christian ceremony with such general agreement. It 
is a larger change even than that which the Roman Catholic 
Church has made in administering the sacrament of the Lord's 

* Archaeological Journal, No. 113, p. 77. 



BAPTISM. 19 

Supper in the bread without the wine. For whilst that was a 
change which did not affect the thing that was signified, the 
change from immersion to sprinkling has set aside the most of 
the Apostolic expressions regarding Baptism, and has altered 
the very meaning of the word. But whereas the withholding 
of the cup produced the long and sanguinary war of Bohemia, 
and has been one of the standing grievances of Protestants 
against the Roman Catholic Church, the withdrawal of the 
ancient rite of immersion, decided by the usage of the whole 
ancient Church to be essential to the sacrament of Baptism, 
has been, with the exception of the insurrection of the Ana- 
baptists of Mtinster, conceded almost without a struggle. 
The whole transaction shows the wisdom of refraining 
from the enforcement of the customs of other regions and 
other climates on unwilling recipients. It shows how the 
spirit which lives and moves in human society can override 
even the most sacred ordinances. It remains an instructive 
example of the facility and silence with which, in matters of 
form, even the widest changes can be effected without any 
serious loss to Christian truth, and with great advantage to 
Christian solemnity and edification. The substitution of sprink- 
ling for immersion must to many at the time, as to the Bap- 
tists* now, have seemed the greatest and most dangerous inno- 
vation. Now, by most Catholics and by most Protestants, it is 
regarded almost as a second nature. 

3. Another change is not so complete, but is perhaps more 
important. In the Apostolic age, and in the three centuries 
which followed, it is evident that, as a general rule, those who 
came to baptism came in full age, of their own deliberate choice. 
We find a few cases of the baptism of children ; in Chan „ e 
the third century we find one case of the baptism of from adult 
infants. Even amongst Christian households the mfant Bap- 
instances of Chrysostom, Gregory Nazianzen, Basil, tism - 
Ephrem of Edessa, Augustine, Ambrose, are decisive proofs 
that it was not only not obligatory but not usual. All these 
distinguished personages had Christian parents, and yet were 
not baptized till they reached maturity. The old liturgical 

* How dangerous this change is regarded by the excellent community of 
Baptists has been strongly brought out by the horror which this Essay' has 
occasioned amongst them since it was originally published. 



20 CHRISTIAN INSTITUTIONS. 

service of Baptism was framed for full-grown converts, and is 
only by considerable adaptation applied to the case of infants. 
Gradually the practice of baptizing infants spread, and after 
the fifth century the whole Christian world, East and West, 
Catholic and Protestant, Episcopal and Presbyterian (with the 
single exception of the sect of the Baptists before mentioned), 
have adopted it. Whereas, in the early ages, Adult Baptism 
was the rule, and Infant Baptism the exception, in later times 
Infant Baptism* is the rule, and Adult Baptism the excep- 
tion. 

What is the justification of this almost universal departure 
from the primitive usage ? There may have been many reasons, 
some bad, some good. One, no doubt, was the superstitious 
feeling already mentioned which regarded Baptism as a charm, 
indispensable to salvation, and which insisted on imparting it 
to every human being who could be touched with water, how- 
ever unconscious. Hence the eagerness with which Roman 
Catholic missionaries, like St. Francis Xavier, have made it the 
chief glory of their mission to baptize heathen populations 
wholesale, in utter disregard of the primitive or Protestant 
practice of long previous preparation, f Hence the capture of 
children for baptism without the consent of their parents, as in 
the celebrated case of the Jewish boy Mortara. Hence the 
curious decision of the Sorbonne quoted in " Tristram Shandy." 
Hence in the early centuries, and still in the Eastern Churches, 
coextensive with Infant Baptism, the practice of Infant Com- 
munion, both justified on the same grounds, and both based 
on the mechanical application of Biblical texts to cases which 
by their very nature were not contemplated in the Apostolic 
age. 

But there is a better side to the growth of this practice 
which, even if it did not mingle in Its origin, is at least 
the cause of its continuance. It lay deep in early Christian 
feeling that the fact of belonging to a Christian household 
consecrated every member of it. Whether baptized or not, 



* In the Church of England there was no office for Adult Baptism in the 
Prayer Book before 1662, and that which was then added is evidently intended 
for the baptism of heathen tribes collectively. 

t See a powerful description of this moae of baptism in Lord Elgin's Life 
and Letters, ed. by Theodore Walrond, p. 338. 



BAPTISM. 21 

the Apostle* urged that, because the parents were holy, there- 
fore the children were holy. They were not to be treated as 
outcasts ; they were not to be treated as heathens ; they were 
to be recognized as part of the chosen people. This passage, 
whilst it is conclusive against the practice of Infant Baptism 
in the Apostolic age, is a recognition of the legitimate reason 
and permanent principle on which it is founded. It is the 
acknowledgment of the Christian saintliness and union of 
family life. The goodness, the holiness, the purity of a 
Christian fireside, of a Christian marriage, of a good death- 
bed, extends to all those who come within its reach. As we 
are all drawn nearer to each other by the natural bonds of 
affection, so we are drawn still nearer when these bonds of 
affection are cemented by Christianity. Every gathering, there- 
fore, for the christening of a little child is truly a family 
gathering. It teaches us how closely we are members one of 
another. It teaches parents how deeply responsible they are 
for the growth of that little creature throughout its future 
education. It teaches brothers and sisters how by them is 
formed the atmosphere, good or bad, in which the soul of their 
little new-born brother or sister is trained to good or to evil. 
It teaches us the value of the purity of those domestic rela- 
tions in which from childhood to old age all our best thoughts 
are fostered and encouraged. It also surmounts and avoids 
the difficulty which encompasses Adult Baptism in any coun- 
try or society already impregnated with Christian influences. 
If the New Testament has no example of Infant Baptism, 
neither has it any example of adult Christian Baptism ; that 
is, of the baptism of those who had been already born and 
tired Christians. The artificial formality of a Baptismal Ser- 
vice for those who in our time have grown up as Christians 
is happily precluded by the administration of the rite at the 
commencement of the natural life. 

But there is a further reason to be found in the character 
of children. This is contained in the Gospel which is read in 
the Baptismal Service for infants throughout the Western 
Church.f In the early ages there probably were those who 

* 1 Cor. vii. 14. 

t In the English Church it is Mark x. 13-16; in the Roman Church it is. Matt. 
xix. 13-15. But in the Eastern Church the passages are still those that apply 
to Adult Baptism, Rom. vi. 3-12; Matt, xxviii. 16-20. 



22 CHRISTIAN INSTITUTIONS. 

doubted whether children could be regarded worthy to be 
dedicated to God or to Christ. The answer is very simple. 
If our Divine Master did not think them unfit to be taken in 
His arms and receive His own gracious blessing when He was 
actually on earth in bodily presence, we need not fear to ask 
His blessing upon them now. 

Infant Baptism is thus a recognition of the good which 
there is in every human soul. It declares that in every child 
of Adam, whilst there is much evil, there is more good; 
whilst there is much which needs to be purified and elevated, 
there is much also which in itself shows a capacity for purity 
and virtue. In those little children of Galilee, all unbaptized as 
they were, not yet even within the reach of a Christian family, 
Jesus Christ saw the likeness of the Kingdom of Heaven ; 
merely because they were little children, merely because the} r 
were innocent human beings, He saw in them the objects, not 
of divine malediction, but of divine benediction. Lord Pal- 
merston was once severely attacked for having said " Children 
are born good." But he, in fact, only said what Chrysostom 
had said before him, and Chrysostom said only what in the 
Gospels had been already said of the natural state of the un- 
baptized Galilean children, " Of such is the Kingdom of 
Heaven." The substitution of Infant Baptism for Adult Bap- 
tism, like the change from immersion to sprinkling, is thus 
a triumph of Christian charity. It exemplifies at the first 
beginning of life that Divine Grace which hopes all things, 
believes all things, endures all things. In each such little child 
our Saviour saw, and we may see, the promise of a glorious 
future. In those little hands folded in unconscious repose, in 
those bright eyes first awakening to the outer world, in that 
soft forehead unfurrowed by the ruffle of care or sin, He saw, 
and we may see, the undeveloped rudimental instruments of 
the labor, and intelligence, and energy of a whole life. And 
not only so — not only in hope, but in actual reality, does the 
blessing on little children, whether as expressed in the Gospel 
story, or as implied in Infant Baptism, acknowledge the excel- 
lency and the value of the childlike soul. Not once only in 
His life, but again and again, He held them up to His disci- 
ples, as the best corrective of the ambitions and passions of 
mankind. He exhorted all men to follow their innocency, 



BAPTISM. 23 

their unconsciousness, their guilelessness, their truthfulness, 
their purity. He saw in them the regenerating, sanctifying 
element of every family, of every household, of every nation. 
He saw, and we may see, in their natural, unaffected, simple, 
unconstrained acts and words the best antidote to the artificial, 
fantastic, exclusive spirit which beset the Pharisees of His 
own time, and must beset the Pharisees, whether of the 
religious or of the irreligious world, in all times. Infant Bap- 
tism thus is the standing testimony to the truth, the value, the 
eternal significance of what is called " natural religion," of 
what Butler calls the constitution of human nature. It is also 
in a more special sense still the glorification of children. It is 
the outward expression of their proper place in the Christian 
Church, and in the instincts of the civilized world. It teaches 
us how much we all have to learn from children, how much 
to enjoy, how much to imitate. It is the response to all that 
poetry of children which in our days has been specially conse- 
crated by Wordsworth and by Keble.* 

When we see what a child is — how helpless, how trusting, 
how hopeful — the most hardened of men must be softened by 
its presence, and feel the reverence due to its tender con- 
science as to its tender limbs. When we remember that 
before their innocent faces the demons of selfishness, and 
impurity, and worldliness, and uncharitableness are put to flight ; 
when we hope that for their innocent souls there is a place in 
a better world, though they are ignorant of those theological 
problems which rend their elders asunder, this may possibly 
teach us that it is not " before all things necessary " to know 
the differences which divide the Churches of the East or 
West, or the Churches of the North or South. When we 
think of the sweet repose of a child as it lies in the arms of 
its nurse, or its pastor at the font, it may recall to us the true 
attitude of humble trust and confidence which most befits the 
human soul, whether of saint or philosopher. " Like as a 



* It is instructive to observe that whilst the sentiments of the two poets on 
the natural attractiveness of children are identical, Keble often endeavors to 
force it into a connection with Baptism, which to Wordsworth is almost un- 
known. It is said that Wordsworth, once reading with admiration a well- 
known poem in the Christian Year, stumbled at the opening lines, "Where 
is it mothers learn their love?" (to which the answer is "the Font.") ''No, 
no," said the old poet, "it is from then* own maternal hearts." 



24 CHRISTIAN INSTITUTIONS. 

weaned child on its mother's breast, my soul is even as a 
weaned child." When we meditate on the imperfect knowl- 
edge of a child, it is the best picture to us of our imper- 
fect knowledge in this mortal state. " I am but as a little 
child," said Sir Isaac Newton, "picking up pebbles on the 
shore of the vast ocean of truth." "When I was a child — 
when I was an infant," said St. Paul, " I spake as an « infant,' 
I thought as an ' infant ; ' but when I became a man, the 
thoughts and the spirit of an 4 infant ' were done away." This 
thought is the pledge of a perpetual progress. The baptism 
of an infant, as the birth of an infant, would be nothing were 
it not that it includes within it the hope and the assurance of all 
that is to follow after. In those feeble cries, in those uncon- 
scious movements, there is the first stirring of the giant within ; 
the first dawn of that reasonable soul which will never die ; 
the first budding of 

The seminal form which in the deeps 
Of that little chaos sleeps. 

The investment of this first beginning with a religious and 
solemn character teaches us that, as we must grow from infancy 
to manhood, so also we must grow from the infancy, the lim- 
ited perceptions, the narrow faith, the stunted hope, the imper- 
fect knowledge, the straitened affections of the infancy of this 
mortal state to the full-grown manhood of our immortal life. 
It suggests that we have to pass from the momentary baptism 
of unconscious infants through the transforming baptism of 
Fire and the Spirit — that is, of Experience and of Character — 
which is wrought out through the many vicissitudes of life and 
the great change of death. 

4. There are many other changes consequent on the substi- 
tution of Infant for Adult Baptism. The whole institution of 
sponsors is of a later date. In the early centuries the answers 
as a general rule were made for the child by the parents. In 
later times the practice of transferring to a child the dramatic 
form which had been originally used for grown-up converts led 
to the system of sponsors. And the pursuance of the allegory 
of a second birth was pushed into the further detail of placing 
the sponsors in the place of parents, and thus creating a new 
series of affinities. In the Roman and the Eastern Church, the 



BAPTISM. 25 

"gossips"* cannot intermarry with each other; and in the 
Middle Ages even the touch of the baptized infant was believed 
to unite in this spiritual kindred. The modern system of 
sponsors, whether with or without these elaborate inquiries 
doubtless has some social and moral advantages; but it is im- 
possible to overlook the difficulties which so complex an ar- 
rangement awakens in the minds of the uneducated, and it was 
with the view of surmounting these entanglements of the con- 
science and understanding that the late Royal Commissioners 
on the Rubrics on one occasion recommended the permission to 
hold the whole of that part of the Baptismal Service as optional 
The connection of the Christian name with Baptism is also 
a . resd . t °l the change. Properly speaking, the name is not 
given in Baptism, but, having been already given, it is an- 
nounced in Baptism as the name by which the individuality 
and personality of the baptized person is for the first time pub- 
licly recognized in the Christian assembly. In the case of the 
Adult Baptism of the early ages this was obvious. Flavius 
Constantmus had always been Flavius Constantinus, and Aure- 
lius Augustmus always Aurelius Augustinus. It was only when 
the time of the name-giving and of the baptism, as in the case 
ot infants, so nearly coincided, that the two came to be con- 
founded. 

Confirmation, which once formed a part of Baptism, has 
been separated from it, and turned into a new ordinance, 
which m the Roman Catholic Church has been made into an- 
other sacrament. Along with this disruption between Con- 
nrmation and Baptism has taken place another chancre,— the 
absolute prohibition throughout the Western Church of Infant 
Communion, which in the early Church was, as it still is in 
the Hast, the inseparable accompaniment of Infant Baptism 
In early ages, as m the Eastern Church, Confirmation was the' 
title given to the unction which accompanied Baptism; in the 
later Roman Church,f and in most Protestant Churches, it is 



26 CHRISTIAN INSTITUTIONS. 

the title given to the open adoption of the Christian faith 
and life in mature years. 

Another curious series of changes has taken place in regard 
to the persons who administered Baptism. In the early centu- 
ries it was only the Bishop, and hence probably has originated 
the retention by the Episcopal order of that part of the old 
Baptism which, as we have just said, is now known by the 
name of Confirmation. As the Episcopate became more sepa- 
rate from the Presbyterate, as the belief in the paramount ne- 
cessity of Baptism became stronger, as the population of Chris- 
tendom increased, the right was extended to Presbyters, then 
to Deacons, and at last to laymen, and, in defiance of all early 
usage, to women. And thus it has happened by one of those 
curious introversions of sentiment which are so instructive in 
ecclesiastical history, that whilst in Protestant Churches, which 
lay least stress on the outward rite, the administration is vir- 
tually confined to the clergy, in the Roman Catholic Church, 
which lays most stress on the rite, the administration is ex- 
tended to the laity and to the female sex. This is a formida- 
ble breach in the usual theories concerning the indispensable 
necessity of the clerical order for the administration of the 
sacramental rites, and it is difficult to justify the difference in 
principle which in the Roman Church has rendered the prac- 
tice with regard to the sacrament of Baptism so exceedingly 
lax, with regard to the sacrament of the Eucharist so exceed- 
ingly rigid. 

Such are some of the general reflections suggested by the 
revolutions through which the oldest ordinance of the Church 
has come down to our day. They may possibly make that 
ordinance more intelligible both to those who adopt and to 
those who have not adopted it. They may also serve to illus- 
trate the transformation both of letter and spirit through which 
all sacred ordinances which retain any portion of their original 
vitality must pass. 



THE EUCHARIST. 27 



CHAPTER II. 

THE EUCHARIST. 

It is proposed to give an account of the primitive institution 
of the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper — unquestionably the 
greatest religious ordinance of the world, whether as regards 
its almost universal adoption in the civilized world, or the 
passions which it has enkindled, or the opposition which it has 
evoked. 

Unlike many of the records of the Gospel story, which from 
the variety and contradiction of the narratives, and from the 
question as to the date and authorship of the Gospels, are 
involved in difficulty, the narrative of the Institution of the 
Lord's Supper is preserved to us on the whole with singular 
uniformity in the three first Gospels, and more than this, it is 
preserved to us almost in the same form in St. Paul's First 
Epistle to the Corinthians, and in that case in one of the few 
writings of the New Testament of which the authority has 
never been questioned at all, and which belongs to a date long 
anterior to any of the Gospels, and which is therefore at once 
the earliest and the most authentic of any part of the Gospel 
History. What St. Paul tells us about the Last Supper is a 
fragment of the Gospel History which all critics and scholars 
will at once admit. "The Supper was universally instituted 
or founded by Jesus."* There is nothing startling, nothing 
difficult to accept in the account — no miraculous portents, no 
doctrine difficult of apprehension — but it contains many of the 
best characteristics of Our Lord's discourses — His deep affec- 
tion to His disciples — His parabolical mode of expression — 
His desire to be remembered after He was gone — His mixture 
of joyous festivity with serious earnestness. It contains also 

* Strauss's Life ofJesua. 



28 CHRISTIAN INSTITUTIONS. 

by implication the story of His arrival in Jerusalem, of His 
betrayal, and of His death. We have enough in this to build 
upon. No one doubts it. Every one may construct from it a 
Christianity sufficient for his belief and for his conduct. 

By dwelling on the original form we pass out of the midst 
of modern controversy to a better, simpler, higher atmosphere. 
It is said that a great genius in France,* when on the point of 
receiving a first communion in the years which followed the 
first Revolution, was overwhelmed by the distracting and per- 
plexing thoughts suggested by all the doubts which raged on 
the subject, but was restored to calm by fixing the mind on 
the one original scene from which the Christian Eucharist has 
sprung. Let us do the same. Let us go back to that one 
occasion, out of which, all are agreed, both its unity and its 
differences arose. 

It was not, as with us, in the early morning or at noonday, 
but in the evening, shortly after sunset — not on the first day 
_ .. of the week, nor the seventh, but on the fifth, or 

Thursday, that the Master and His disciples met 
together. The remembrance of the day of the week has now 
entirely perished except in Passion Week. It was revived in 
the time of Calvin, who proposed in recollection of it to have 
the chief Christian festival and day of rest transferred on this 
account from Sunday to Thursday. But this was never carried 
out, and the day remains now unremembered. The remem- 
brance still lingers in the name when we call it a supper — the 
Lord's Supper — and still more in Germany, the Holy Evening 
Meal. For such it was. It was the evening feast, of which 
every Jewish household partook on the night, as it might be, 
before or after the Passover. They were collected together, 
the Master and His twelve disciples, in one of the large upper 
rooms above the open court of the inn or caravanseira to which 
they had been guided. The couches or mats were spread 
round the room, as in all Eastern houses; and on those the 
guests lay reclined, three on each couch, according to the cus- 
tom derived from the universal usage of the Greek or Roman 
world. The ancient Jewish usage of eating the Passover 
standing had given way, and a symbolical meaning was given 

* Memoirs of George Sand. 



THE EUCHARIST. 29 

to what was in fact a mere social fashion, that they might lie 
then like kings, with the ease becoming free men.* 

There they lay, the Lord in the midst, next to the beloved 
disciple, and next to him the eldest, Peter. Of the position of 
the others we know nothing. There was placed on The ele- 
the table in front of the guests, one, two, perhaps merits. 
four cups, or rather bowls. There is at Genoa a bowl which 
professes to be the original chalice — a mere fancy, no doubt 
— but probably representing the original shape. This bowl 
was filled with wine mixed up with water. The wine of 
old times was always mixed with water. No one ever thought 
of taking it without, just as now no one would think of taking 
treacle or vinegar without water. Beside the cup was one or 
more of the large thin Passover cakes of unleavened bread, 
such as may still at the Paschal season be seen in all Jewish 
houses. It is this of which the outward form has been pre- 
served in the thin round wafer which is used in the Roman 
Catholic and Lutheran Churches. It was the recollection of 
the unleavened bread of the Israelites when they left Egypt. 
As the wine was mixed with water, so the bread was probably 
served up with fish. The two always went together. We see 
examples of it in the earlier meals in the Gospel, and so doubt- 
less it, was in this last. Close beside this cake was another 
recollection of the Passover — a thick sop, which was supposed 
to be like the Egyptian clay, and in which the fragments of 
the Paschal cake were dipped. Round this table, leaning on 
each other's breasts, reclining on those couches, were the 
twelve disciples and their Master. From mouth to mouth 
passed to and fro the eager inquiry, and the startled look when 
they heard that one of them should betray Him.f Across the 
table and from side to side were shot the earnest questions 
from Peter, from Jude, from Thomas, from Philip. In each 
face might have been traced the character of each — receiving 
a different impression from what he saw and heard — and in 
the midst of all this the majestic sorrowful countenance of the 

* Maimonides, Pesach, 10. 1 ; Farrar, Life of Christ, ii. 278. 

t In this respect the picture of the Last Supper by Leonardo da Vinci gives 
a true impression. The moment represented is that in which, as a bomb- 
shell, the declaration that one of them should betray Him has fallen among 
the Apostles. It is not a picture of the Last Supper, so much as the expres- 
sion of the various emotions called forth by that announcement. 



30 CHRISTIAN INSTITUTIONS. 

Master of the Feast, as He drew towards Him the several cups 
and the thin transparent cake, and pronounced over each the 
Jewish blessing with those few words which have become 
immortal. 

Let us see then from hence the details of the first institution 
of the ordiance. 

1. It was the ancient Jewish paschal meal. He showed by 
thus using it that He did not mean to part the new from the 
_. old. He intended that there should be this con- 
tionwith nection, however slight, with the ancient Israelite 
Judaism. nation. The blessing which He pronounced on the 
cup and the bread was taken from the blessing which the 
Jewish householder pronounced on them. The "hymn" 
which they sang was the long chant from the 113th to the 
1 1 8th Psalm, celebrating the Exodus. The moon which shone 
into that upper room, and which shines over our Easter night, 
is the successor of the moon which lighted up the night to be 
ever remembered when Israel came out of Egypt.* The most 
Christian of all Christian ordiances is thus the most Jewish. 
Whitsunday has hardly any Jewish recollections, Christmas and 
Good Friday none. But Easter and the Lord's Supper are the 
Passover in another form, and the link which binds the old 
and the new together is the same sense of deliverance. The 
birthday of the Jewish Religion was the day of the birth of a 
free people. The birthday of the Christian Religion was no 
less the day of the birth of the freedom of the human race, of 
the human conscience, of the human soul. "This year," so 
says the Jewish service, " we are servants here ; next year we 
hope to be freemen in the land of Israel." This year Christen- 
dom may be a slave to its prejudices and its passions ; next 
year it may hope to be free in the land of goodness. 

2. But out of this supper He chose those elements which 
were most simple and most enduring. He left altogether out 
Selection of of notice the paschal lamb and the bitter herbs. He 
unlveXd ^^ no ^ think it necessary to accept all or reject all 
elements. of what He found. Here as elsewhere He used 
the best of what came before Him. He exercised His free 



* The hymn which Sir Walter Scott has put into the mouth of a Jewess, 
" When Israel forth from bondage came," is also one of the very best hymns 
of Christians. 



THE EUCHARIST. 31 

right of choice. When He took into His hands — " His holy 
and venerable hands," as the old Liturgies express it — the 
paschal bread and the paschal wine, it was the selection of 
them from the rest of the Jewish ceremony, as He selected 
His doctrine from the rest of the Jewish books and Jewish 
teaching. He said nothing of the water which was mixed 
with the wine. That was a mere passing custom which would 
change with time and fashion. He said nothing of the form 
or materials of the bread. It was unleavened, it was round, 
it was thin, it was a cake rather than a loaf. But He said 
nothing of all these things, nothing of the accompanying fish. 
All those questions which have arisen as to the proportions in 
which the materials should be mixed were far, very far behind 
Him, or far, very far beyond Him. He took the bread and 
wine as He found them ; He fixed on the bread and wine as 
representing those two sustaining elements which are found 
almost everywhere — bread that strengtheneth man's heart, wine 
that maketh glad the heart of man. These were the fruits of 
the earth which He blessed, for which He gave thanks, to 
indicate the gratitude of man for these simple gifts. As in 
His teaching He had chosen the most homely images of the 
shepherd, the sower, the guest, the traveller, so in His worship 
He chose the most homely elements of food. How great is 
the contrast with the sacred emblems of other religions — the 
bulls, the goats, the white horses, the jewels, the robes. It is 
the servants, the inferiors, the precursors, who need these ap- 
pendages to mark them. The True Master is known by the 
simplicity of His appearance, the plainness of His manners and 
His dress. 

3. He chose also this particular occasion, His parting supper, 
His farewell meal, as the foundation of His most sacred ordi- 
nance, to show us that here, as elsewhere, His reli- parting 
gion was to be part of our common life, not sep- meal - 
arated from it — that the human affections of friend for friend, 
the sorrow of parting, the joy of meeting again, are the very 
bonds by which union and sympathy are formed. The very 
name of supper reminds us that our holiest religious ordinance 
sprung from a festive meal, amidst eating and drinking, amidst 
weeping and rejoicing, amidst question and answer. It proves 
that amongst the means of Christian edification, not the least 



32 CHRISTIAN INSTITUTIONS. 

are those interchanges of hospitality where man talks freely 
with man, friend with friend, guest with guest. Many such a 
meal has ere this worked the blessed work of even a Christian 
sacrament. How wise is that advice given by a great humorist 
of our age,* not less wise than he was witty, that bishops 
should compose the differences of their clergy not by rebukes, 
but by meeting at the same social table. How many a quarrel, 
how many a heart-burning, how many a false estrangement, 
might in like manner be reconciled and done away with by the 
Sacred Supper, which is the prototype and ideal of all suppers, 
of every chief meal of the day everywhere. " The supper," says 
Luther, " which Christ held with His disciples when He gave 
them His farewell, must have been full of friendly heart-inter- 
course ; for Christ spoke just as tenderly and cordially to them 
as a father to his dear little children when he is obliged to part 
from them. He made the best of their infirmities and had 
patience with them, although all the while they were so slow 
to understand, and still lisped like babes. Yet that must in- 
deed have been choice friendly and delightful converse when 
Philip said, ' Show us the way,' and Thomas said, ' We know 
not the way,' and Peter, ' I will go with thee to prison and to 
death.' It was simple, quiet table-talk ; every one opening his 
heart, and showing his thoughts freely and frankly, and with- 
out restraint. Never since the world began was there a more 
delightful meal than that." It is the likeness, the model, of 
all serious conversation, of all family intercourse, of all social 
reciprocity. 

4. And lastly, He gave all these things a new meaning. 
Here, as elsewhere, what He touched He vivified, what He 
its future used He transformed and transfigured. It might 
meaning. have been otherwise. We might have inherited 
only the Paschal feast — the blessing of the natural gifts — the 
social meal. But He did more than this. He tells them that 
it is Himself who is to live over again in their thoughts every 
time they break that bread and drink that wine. What those 
common earthly sustenances are to their bodies, that His Spirit 
must be to their souls. This was what the Apostles needed at 
that moment of depression. They felt that He was going to 

* Sydney Smith. 



TEM EUCHARIST. 3g 

leave them ; He made them feel that He would still be with 
them. It was to be a memorial of His death, but it was also 
to be a pledge of His life. Five versions have been handed 
down to us of the words which He used — one by St. Matthew, 
one by St. Mark, one by St. Luke, one by St. Paul, a fifth is 
found in the oldest Liturgical forms of the early Church, dif- 
fering from the others. In the Fourth Gospel, whilst the 
words are not given at all, their substance extends through the 
whole of that parting discourse which is in this account a sub- 
stitute for them. This variety of narratives, whilst it shows 
the slight value which those early times attached to the letter, 
shows also the essential spirit of the whole transaction. " This 
is my Body." " This is my Blood." " This is the New Tes- 
tament." " I am the vine." " I am the way, the truth, and 
the life." " It is expedient for you that I go away, for if I go 
not away the Comforter will not come to you." What the 
Apostles are imagined to have felt as they heard those words 
is represented by their questions and answers. In various 
forms they longed to know whither He was going, — they asked 
Him to show them the Father, — they asked that He would 
manifest Himself to them and not to the world. But, one and 
all, amidst all their failings, they were cheered and strength- 
ened. They felt that they had not parted with Him forever. 
The very manner in which He broke the bread was enough to 
bring Him back to their recollections. They recognized Him 
by it at Emmaus and on the shores of Gennesareth. It was 
not only as they had seen Him at the last supper, but at those 
earlier feasts where He had blessed and broken the bread and 
distributed the fishes on the hills of Galilee. The Last Supper 
was in fact a continuation of those meals.* It belonged to the 
future side of His life ; that is, as He Himself had explained to 
them, not the flesh, which profited nothing, but the words 
which were His spirit and His life. Not only these expres- 
sions, but many others yet stronger, repeat over anil over the 
truth which that last supper taught. Christ's own inmost self 
would remain always the life and soul -of the Church and of 
the world. " Wherever two or three are gathered in my name, 
there am I in the midst of you." " Inasmuch as you did it to 



• Renan, Vie de Jtsus, 



34 CHRISTIAN INSTITUTIONS. 

the least of these my brethren you did it to me." " Lo, I am 
with you always, even to the end of the world." 

It is also the glorification of the power of Memory. Each 
one may think of those who are gone, and whose bequests we 
still desire to carry on. Each one, as at the Lord's Table we 
think of the departed, and think also of any friendless one to 
be comforted, of any institution needing help, of any suffering 
one to be cheered, may hear the voice, whatsoever it may be, 
nearest and dearest, or highest and holiest, in the other world, 
saying, " This do y in remembrance of Me." Remembrance — 
recalling of the past — is the moral, mental, spiritual means by 
which "the Last Supper" becomes "the Lord's Supper." 

They who believe in the singular mercy and compassion 
shown in the Parable of the Prodigal Son, or in the toleration 
and justice due to those who are of another religion, as in the 
Parable of the Good Samaritan, they, whether they be Chris- 
tian in name or not, whether they have or have not partaken 
of the sacrament, have thus received Christ, because they have 
received that which was the essence of Christ, His spirit of 
mercy and toleration. 

It is the simple fact, which no one of whatever creed dis- 
putes, that Christ has been, and is still, the Soul of Christen- 
dom, and to His life we go back to recover our ideal of what 
Christianity is — that wherever we meet any good thought or 
deed, any suffering or want to be relieved in any part of the 
world, there we touch a hand that is vanished — there we hear 
a voice that is silent. It is the hand, it is the voice, of our 
Redeemer. Other teachers, other founders of religions, have 
cared that their names should be honored and remembered. He 
cared not for this, if only Himself, His spirit, His works, sur- 
vived — if to the poor, the suffering, the good everywhere, were 
paid the tenderness, the hpnor, due to Him. In theii happi- 
ness He is blessed, in their honor He is honored, and in their 
reception He is received. It is the last triumph of Divine un- 
selfishness, and it is its last and greatest reward. For thus He 
lives again in His members and they live in Him. Even those 
who have most questioned and most doubted acknowledge 
that " He is a thousand times more living, a thousand times 
more loved, than He was in His short passage through life, 
that He presides still day by day over the destiny of the world. 



THE EUCHARIST. 3/5 

He started us on a new direction, and in that direction we still 
move." * 

It used to be said in the wars between the Moors and the 
Spaniards that a perfect character would be the man who had 
the virtues of the Mussulman and the creed of the Christian. 
But this is exactly reversing our Lord's doctrine. If the 
virtues of the Arabs were greater than the virtues of the Span- 
iards, then, whether they accepted Christ in word or not, it 
was they who were the true believers, and it was the Christians 
who were the infidels. 

When the Norman bishops asked Anselm whether Alfege, 
who was killed by the Danes at Greenwich, could be called a 
martyr, because he died not on behalf of the faith of Christ, 
but only to prevent the levying of an unjust tax, Anselm 
answered : " He was a martyr, because he died for justice ; 
justice is the essence of Christ, even although His name is not 
mentioned." The Norman prelates, so far as their complaint 
went, were unbelievers in the true nature of Christ. Anselm 
was a profound believer, just as Alfege was an illustrious 
martyr. When Bishop Pearson in his work on the Creed vin- 
dicates the Divinity of Christ without the slightest mention of 
any of those moral qualities by which He has bowed down the 
world before Him, his grasp on the doctrine is far feebler than 
that of Rousseau or Mill, who have seized the very attributes 
which constitute the marrow and essence of His nature. When 
Commander G-oodenough, on one of the most edifying, the 
most inspiring, death-beds which can be imagined, spoke in 
the most heroic and saintly accents to his sailors and friends, 
there were pious souls who were deeply perplexed because he 
had not mentioned the name of Jesus. It was they who for 
the moment were faithless, as it was he who was the true be- 
liever, although, except in a language they did not understand, 
he had not spoken expressly of the Saviour with whose Spirit 
he was so deeply penetrated. 

Such are some of the ways in which the life of Christ is 
still lived on the earth. 

* Renan, Vie de J6sus, p. 421. 



36 CHRISTIAN INSTITUTIONS. 



CHAPTER III. 

THE EUCHARIST IN THE EARLY CHURCH. 

We now pass from the original institution to its contin- 
uance in the Apostolic age and in the two centuries that 
followed. 

The change had already begun. The Paschal elements had 
dropped out. The lamb, the bitter herbs, the sop, the hymn, 
had all disappeared; the idea of the last parting of friends had 
also vanished. Three — possibly four — examples of it are given 
in the first century. In the Acts the believers at Jerusalem 
are described as partaking of a daily meal, in their private 
houses, as part of their religious devotions.* At Corinth the 
same custom can still be traced as part of a meal.f At Troas, 
on the Apostle's last journey, it is again indicated in connection 
with the first distinct notice of the religious observance of the 
first day of the week. J On the voyage to Rome it can be 
discerned, though more doubtfully, in the midst of a common 
meal. § One characteristic these accounts possess in common. 
The earthly and the heavenly, the social and the religious, 
aspect of life were not yet divided asunder. The meal and 
the sacrament blended thus together were the complete realiza- 
tion in outward form of the Apostle's words, — perhaps, in fact, 
suggested by it, — " Whether ye eat or drink, or whatsoever ye 
do, do all to the glory of God ; " " Whatsoever ye do, in word 
or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to 
God and the Father by Him." 

Perhaps the nearest likeness now existing to the union of 
social intercourse with religious worship is to be found in the 
services of the Church which of all others has been least 
changed in form, however much it may have altered in spirit, 

* Acts ii, 43. 1 1 Cor. xi. 20. % Acts xx. 7. \ Acts xxvii. 85. 



THE EUCHARIST IN THE EARLY CHURCH 37 

from ancient times — the services of the Coptic or Egyptian 
Church of Alexandria. There is, indeed, even less of a supper 
in the Coptic Eucharist than there is in that of the Western 
Churches ; but there is more of primitive freedom and of inno- 
cent enjoyment, the worshippers coming to meet each other 
and talk to each other, to be like a family gathering, than is 
ever seen in any European Church. 

But even in early times, even in the Apostolical age, the dif- 
ficulties of bringing an ideal and an actual life together made 
themselves felt. As the faults of Ananias and Sapphira 
profaned and made impossible a community of property in 
Jerusalem, so the excesses and disorders of the Corinthian 
Christians profaned and made impossible a continuance of the 
primitive celebration of the Eucharist. The community of 
property had vanished, and so had the community of the 
sacrament. The time was coming when the secular and the 
spiritual were disentangled one from the other ; the simplicity 
and the gladness of the primitive communion could no longer 
be continued, and therefore the form is altered to ease the 
spirit. This we shall endeavor to unravel in detail. 

I. The festive character of the meal, which was its predom- 
inant character, in the first age, lasted for some time after the 
change of its outward detail began to take effect. Its f es tive 
In some respects it had been enhanced and empha- character, 
sized by its combination with Gentile usages. It was like 
the dinner of a club, or, as the Greeks termed it, an eranus — 
a fraternity. 

This was one of the peculiar experiments of Greek social 
life. The clubs — sometimes called erani, sometimes thiasi — 
of Athens, of Rhodes, and of the iEgean isles were savings 
banks, insurance offices, mutual help societies. They had their 
devices engraven on tablets. They had their common festive 
meals — usually in gardens, round an altar with sacrifices. They 
were the centres of whatever sentiments of piety, charity, and 
religious morality lingered in Greek society.* " A common 
meal is the most natural and universal way of expressing, 
maintaining, and as it were notifying relations of kinship. The 
spirit of antiquity regarded the meals of human beings as 

* See the authorities quoted in Renan, Les Apotres, pp. 852, 853. 



38 CHRISTIAN INSTITUTIONS. 

having the nature of sacred things." If, therefore, it sounds 
degrading to compare or connect the Christian Communion to 
a club dinner, it is owing to the fact that the moderns connect 
less dignified associations with meals than the ancients did, 
and that most clubs have a far less obvious dignity than the 

first Christian society When men of different degrees 

or nations received together as from the hand of God this 
simple repast, they were reminded in the most forcible manner 
of their common human wants and their common character of 
pensioners on the bounty of the Universal Father.* 

In the Communion of the first and second centuries this 
character of the Grecian club was evident in its very outset, for 
each brought, as to the common meal, his own contribution in 
his basket, each helped himself from the common table. j- So 
we see them in the catacombs, and in a bas-relief in S. 
Ambrogio at Milan, sitting round a semicircular table, men 
and women together, which so far was an infringement on the 
Greek custom, where the sexes were kept apart. More than 
once a woman presides. Two maidens appear ; we can hardly 
tell whether they are real or allegorical, but if allegorical they 
would not have been introduced unless they might have been 
real. " Irene, da calida — Agape, misce mi " J (Peace, give me 
the hot water — Love, mix it for me). It was also, in connection 
with the dead, a likeness of the funeral feast, such as existed in 
pagan households, the family meeting annually to a repast, in 
the cellce memorice, with couches, coverlets, and dresses pro- 
vided. § 

This combination of a repast and a religious rite is already 
familiar by the practice of the religious world amongst the 
Jews. There were the meals of the priests, who, coming up 
from their homes in the country for the Temple service, lived 
together like fellows of a college, and dined at a common 
table, with the strictness of etiquette which became their 
position, always washing before sitting down, blessing the 
bread and wine, and uttering thanks after the close. These 
common meals were usually on festivals or Sabbaths. || The 

* Ecce Homo, pp. 173, 174. 

t This was changed before Tertullian's time (De Corona, 2, 3). 

X Kenan, St. Paul, 266. 

§ Smith's Dictionary of Christian Antiquities, " Cellae Memorise," p. 387. 

1 Derenbourg, Palestine, 142-401 ; Geiger, Urschrift, 123. 



THE EUCHARIST IN THE EARLY CHURCH. 39 

schools of the Pharisees carried out the imitation of this in 
their ordinary life, adding the same care to preserve the like- 
ness of a meal in the Temple. In order to avoid breaking the 
Sabbath by going or carrying provisions more than 2,000 
cubits on the Sabbath, they invented a plan of depositing their 
provisions at intervals of 2,000 cubits, so as to create imagi- 
nary houses, from each of which they could lawfully go. The 
Essenes always took their meals in common with the same 
object.* 

Gradually the repast was parted from the religious act. 
The repast became more and more secular, the religious act 
more and more sacred. Already in the Apostolic age the 
Apostle's stern rebuke had commenced the separation. From 
century to century the breach widened. The two remained 
for a time together, but distinct, the meal immediately pre- 
ceding or succeeding the sacrament. Then the ministers 
alone, instead of the congregation, took the charge of dis- 
tributing the elements. Then by the second century the dai- 
ly administration ceased, and was confined to Sundays and 
festivals. Then the meal came to be known by the distinct 
name of agape. Even the Apostolical description of "the 
Lord's Supper" was regarded as belonging to a meal, altogether 
distinct from the sacrament. Finally the meal itself fell under 
suspicion. Augustine and Ambrose condemned the thing 
itself, as the Apostle had condemned its excesses, and in the 
fifth century f that which had been the original form of the 
Eucharist was forbidden as profane by the councils of Car- 
thage and Laodicea. It was the parallel to the gradual extinc- 
tion of the bath in baptism.^ 

But of this social, festive characteristic of the Eucharistic 
meal many vestiges long continued, and some continue still. 

1. The name of the Lord's Supper was too closely connect- 
ed with the original institution to be allowed altogether to 
perish. To this we will return for another reason presently. 

* Derenbourg, Palestine, 142. 

t Renan's St. Paul, 262; Bingham's Antiquities, xv. 7. 

% An exactly analogous process may be seen in the usage of the Church of 
Scotland. Originally there was no religious service at a Scottish funeral, 
only a meal with a grace at the dead man's house. The meal has gradually 
dwindled away to a glass of wine and a few morsels of biscuit; the grace has 
swelled into a chapter, a prayer, a blessing, and contains the germ of the 
whole funeral service of the Church of England. 



40 CEEISTIAN INSTITUTIONS. 

But even tne other names of the ordinance have reference to the 
social gatherings. The word in the Eastern Church is either 
ovra£;i<Z (synaxis), a coming together, or (as in Russian) obed- 
nia, sl feast. Collecta is in the Latin Church a translation of 
synaxis, and "collect" for the prayer used in the Communion 
Service is probably derived from the whole service. It was 
" oratio ad colbctam;" then by way of abbreviation the prayer 
itself came to be called "collect." Communion is a word which 
conveys the same import. It is joint participation. The word 
mass or missa is often derived from the accidental phrase at the 
end of the service, " Ita missa * est," as if the heathen sacrifices 
had been called " IliceV But it is at least an ingenious explana- 
tion that it is a phrase taken from the food placed on the 
table — missus \ — or possibly from the table itself — mensa — 
and thence perpetuating itself in the old English word " mess 
of pottage," "soldier's mess""l — and in the solemn words for 
feasts, as Christmas for the Feast of the Nativity, Michaelmas for 
the Feast of St. Michael, and the like. In that case "the 
mass" would be an example of a word which has come to 
convey an absolutely different, if not an exactly opposite, 
impression from that which it originally expressed. 

2. Besides the name there are fragments of the ancient 
usage preserved in various churches. 

At Milan an old man and an old woman § bring up to the 
altar the pitcher and the loaves, as representing the ancient 
gifts of the church. 

In England the sacred elements are provided not by the 
minister/ but by the parish. 

In the East always, and in the West occasionally, there is 
the distribution amongst the congregation of the bread, from 
which the consecrated food is taken under the name of 
" eulogia " — " blessed bread." Eulogia is in fact another 
name for Eucharistia. . 

There lingered in the fifth century the practice of invoking 
the name of Christ whenever they drank, || and Gregory of 



* The first certain use of the word is in Ambrose (Sermon 34). 
+ Missus is a " course " (Capitolinus in Pertinax, c. 12; Lampridius in Ela- 
gabalus, c 30), as in the French mets, entremets. 
X Crabb Robinson, in Archceologia, xxvi. 242-53. 
§ Bona, Rer. Lit. i. 10. [ Greg. Naz. Hist. iv. 84; Sozomen, Hist. i. 17. 



THE EUCHARIST IN THE EARLY CHURCH. 41 

Tours describes the act of eating and drinking together as a 
kind of sacred pledge or benediction.* 

The order in the Church of England and in the Roman 
basilicas is that the priest is not to communicate alone. 

The practice in the Eastern and Roman Catholic Church of 
the priest communicating daily is a relic of the time when it 
was a daily event. It had been gradually restricted to the first 
day of the week, but traces of its continuance on other days are 
never altogether absent. It is now continued partly as a form, 
partly perhaps from a sense of its necessity. But the practice 
has its root in the original intention of its being the daily meal.f 

II. Another part of the original idea, both as de- Its evening 
rived from the first institution and also from this character, 
festive social character, was that it was an evening meal. 
Such was evidently the case at Corinth and at Troas. 

This also is still preserved in its name, " Supper," dei7trov, 
Ccena, la Sainte Cene, Abendmahl. The 6eir]OV (supper) of 
the Greeks was especially contrasted with the apiorov (dinner, 
lunch), or midday meal, as being in the evening, usually after 
sunset, corresponding to the Homeric dop7tvov. The coena of 
the Romans was not quite so late, but was certainly in the 
afternoon. The word " supper " in English has never had any 
other meaning. Of this usage, one trace is the use of candles, 
lighted or unlighted. Partly it may have originated in the 
necessity of illuminating the darkness of the catacombs, but 
probably its chief origin is their introduction at the evening 
Eucharist. The practice of the nightly Communion lingered till 
the fifth century in the neighborhood of Alexandria,]; and in 
the Thebaid, and in North Africa on Maundy Thursday, but 
as a general rule it was changed in the second century to an 
early hour in the morning,§ perhaps to avoid possible scan- 
dals — and thus what had been an accidental deviation from 
the original intention has become a sacred regulation, which 
by some Christians is regarded as absolutely inviolable. | 

*Hist. vi. 5; viii. 2. 

t This is proved from the passages cited in Freeman's Principles of Divine 
Service, i. 180-90, of which the object is to show the reverse. 

% Cyprian, Ep. 63; Socrates, v. 22; Sozomen, iv. 22; Augustine, Ep. 118. 

§ Plin. Ep. x. 97; Const. Apost. ii. 39; Tertullian, De Fugd in Pers. 14; De 
Cor. 3; Minutius Felix, 8. There were still nocturnal masses till the Lime of 
Pius V. (Bona, i. 211). 

II It is a curious fact that the practice of "evening communions'' in the 



42 CHRISTIAN INSTITUTIONS, 

ILL The posture of the guests at the sacred meal must have 
been kneeling, standing, sitting, or recumbent. Of these four 
positions no single Church practises that which cer- 
tainly was the original one. It is quite certain that 
at the original institution, the couches or divans were spread 
round the upper chamber, as in all Eastern — it may be said, 
in all Roman houses; and on these the guests lay reclined, 
three on each couch. This posture, which probably continued 
throughout the Apostolic age, is now observed nowhere.* Even 
the famous pictures which bring it before us have almost all 
•shrunk from the ancient reality. They dare not be so bold as 
the truth. One painter only — Poussin — has ventured to de- 
lineate the event as it actually occurred. f 

The next posture is sitting, and is the nearest approach in 
spirit, though not in form, to the original practice of reclin- 
ing. It has since disappeared everywhere with two excep- 
tions. The Presbyterian Churches receive the Communion 
sitting, by way of return to the old practice. The Pope for 
many centuries also received it sitting, probably by way of 
direct continuation from ancient times. It is disputed 
whether he does so now. It would seem that about the 
fifteenth century he exchanged the posture for one half sit- 
ting, half standing, just as in the procession of Corpus Christi 
he adopts a posture in which he seems to kneel but really 
sits. I 

The next posture is that which indicates the transition from 
the social meal to the religious ordinance. It is the attitude 
of standing, which throughout the East, as in the Apostolic 
and Jewish Church, is the usual posture of prayer. This is 
preserved in the Western Church only in the attitude of the 
celebrating priest, who in the Roman Catholic Church remains 
standing. Whether in the English Church the rubric enjoins 
the clergyman to stand or to kneel while receiving has been 
much disputed. If the former, it is then in conformity with 

Church of England is said to have been originated by the High Church party, 
to whom it has now become the most offensive of all deviations from the ordi- 
nary usage. 

* The words aveKelro— ava(cei/u.eVwv— aveneae (Matt. xxvi. 4; Mark xiv. 13; Luke 
xxii. 14; John xiii. 23, 28) are decisive. 

+ There is also a quite modern representation of the same kind in the altar- 
piece of a church in Darlington. 

% The question is discussed at length in the chapter on the Pope, 



THE EUCHARIST IN THE EARLY OHURCK 43 

the ancient usage of the Roman Church ; if the latter, it is in 
conformity with modern usage. 

The fourth is the posture of kneeling. This, which pre- 
vails amongst all members of the English Church, and amongst 
lay members of the Roman Catholic Church, is the most 
modern of all. It expresses reverence, in the most suitable 
way for "Western Christians ; but all trace of the original, fes- 
tive, Oriental character of the ordinance is altogether super- 
seded by it. 

We now come to the sacred elements. 

IV. The lamb, the bitter herbs of the first Paschal feast, if 
they were retained at all in the Apostolic times, soon disap- 
peared. It was not on these, but on the homely, universal 
elements of the bread and wine that the First Founder of the 
ordinance laid the whole stress. 

The original bread of the original institution was not a loaf, 
but the Paschal cake — a large round thin biscuit, such as may 
be seen every Easter in Jewish houses. " He 
broke the bread," "the breaking of bread," is far 
more suitable to this than to a loaf. Of this form the trace 
remains, reduced to the smallest particle, in the wafer* as used 
in the Roman and Lutheran Churches. It may be doubted, 
however, whether they took it direct from the Paschal cake — 
first, because the Greek Churches, which are more tenacious 
of ancient usages than the Latin, have not done so ; secondly, 
because the round form is sufficiently accounted for by the 
fact that the bread as used by the ancient world (as seen in 
the bakers' shops at Pompeii and also in the paintings of the 
catacombs) was in the shape of round flat cakes. It is also 
alleged (though this is doubtful) that the common bread of 



* A long argument was maintained in an English newspaper to repudiate 
the validity of the Roman Sacrament, on the ground that its wafers were 
made not of bread but of paste. A curious example of an adventitious 
sacredness attaching itself to a particular form of Sacramental bread is to be 
found in the use of "shortbread," instead of the ordinary leavened or un- 
leavened bread, amongst the "hill men" of Scotland. "I myself," writes a 
well-informed minister of the Church of Scotland, "thirty years ago assisted 
at an open-air Communion in the parish of Dairy, in Galloway, where this 
had been the custom from time immemorial. The minister's wife sent so 
many pounds of fresh butter to a distant baker, and received back, prepara- 
tory to the Communion, so many cakes of 'shortbread,' i.e., brittle bread, 
which was kept nearly as carefully as a Roman Catholic would keep his 
wafer." 



44 CHRISTIAN INSTITUTIONS. 

the poor m early times was in the West unleavened, whereas 
in the East it was leavened. There are some parts of the 
Greek Church where the use of leavened bread is justified by 
the assertion that they have an actual piece of the very loaf 
used at the Last Supper, and that it is leavened.* 

This peculiarity of form is an illustration of two general 
principles. First, it is evident that the Roman and Lutheran 
Churches, by adhering to the literal form of the old institution, 
have lost its meaning; and the Reformed Churches, whilst 
certainly departing from the original form, have preserved the 
meaning. The bread of common life, which was in the three 
first centuries represented by the thin unleavened cake, is now 
represented by the ordinary loaf. The mystical fancy of the 
Middle Ages which attached to the wafer is in fact founded 
on that which was once the most ordinary form of food. 
Secondly, the fierce .controversy which broke out afterwards 
between the Greek and Latin Churches on the question 
whether the bread should be leavened or unleavened arose, in 
the first instance, out of the most trivial divergence of an 
usage of ordinary life. 

The wine in the original institution was (as we know from 
the Paschal Supper) arranged in two, three, or sometimes four 
cups, or rather bowls. In this bowl was the wine 
of Palestine mixed with water. The water is not 
expressly mentioned either in the account of the original 
institution or in the earliest accounts of the primitive Com- 
munion ; but it was beyond question there, in accordance with 
the universal practice of the ancient world. To drink wine \ 
without water was like drinking pure brandy now. The name 
for a drinking goblet was uparrjp^ which means a " mixing " 
vessel. To this day wine in modern Greek is called xpacfi, 
"the mixed." 

The deviations from the original use of the cup are instruc- 
tive from their variety. Not a single Church now communi- 
cates in the form in which it was originally given. The 
Reformed Churches, on the same principle as that on which 



* Pashley's Crete, i. 316. 

t Thus in the Syro-Jacobitic liturgy (see Neale's Translations of Primitive 
Liturgies, pp. 202, 223), it is said He "temperately and moderately" mingled 
the wine and water. It is also mentioned m Justin Martyr, Apol. c. 67. 



THE EUCHARIST IN THE EARLY CHURCH 45 

they have adopted a common loaf instead of a thin wafer, have 
dropped the water. The Greek Churches have mixed the 
bread with the wine. The Roman Churches have dropped the 
use of the cup altogether except for the officiating priest. It 
was an innovation which spread slowly, and which but for the 
Reformation would have become universal, except in a few 
curious instances in which the original practice continued. 
The King of France always took the cup. The Bohemians* 
extorted the use of it from the Pope. The laity in England 
were long conciliated by having unconsecrated wine. The 
Abbot of Westminster always administered it to the King and 
Queen at the coronation. And in the three northern churches f 
of Jarrow, Monkwearmouth, and Norham it was given till 
15154 

There remains one other usage, more doubtful perhaps but 
exceedingly interesting, and from which the variation has been 
of the same kind as those we have noticed. In 
ancient times a meal, even of bread, was not thought 
complete without fish (oipov) whenever it could be had. 
" Bread and fish " went together like " bread and cheese " or 
"bread and butter" in England, or (as we have just observed) 
like "wine and water" in the old classical world. Meat was 
the exception and fish § the rule. And accordingly, if not in 
the original institution of the Last Supper, yet in those indica- 
tions of the first continuation of it which are contained in the 
last chapters of St. Luke and St. John, fish is always mentioned 
with bread as part of the sacred meal. In the local traditions 
of the Roman peasants — many of them no doubt mere plays 
of fancy, yet some probably imbued with the continuous tra- 
ditions of antiquity — it is said that when Jesus Christ came to 
the house of an old woman and asked for food, she answered, 
" There is a little fish " (it was a little fish, " that is not so long 
as my hand," said the peasant) "and some crusts of bread 
which they gave me at the eating-house for charity, and this 



* Two chalices remain in one of the Bohemian churches (and that Protes- 
tant), which were carried at the head of the Hussite armies. 

t Blunt's Reformation, p. 34. 

X The Wesleyans in the Sandwich Islands celebrated the Eucharist with 
treacle instead of wine,— there being no vines,— and were opposed by the 
Quakers on principle. I owe this to the late Count Strelecski. 

§ Bekker's Charicles, 323, 334. 



46 CHRISTIAN INSTITUTIONS. 

flask of wine and water which they gave me there." * Further, 
the early representations of the Sacred Supper (whether we 
call it Eucharist or Agape) which appear in the catacombs, al- 
most always include fishes— sometimes placed on the cakes of 
bread, sometimes on a platter by itself. It is almost impos- 
sible to resist the inference which has been drawn, that this too 
was part of the primitive celebration. It was a part which 
would be doubly cherished, a recollection not only of the upper 
chamber of Jerusalem, but of the still more sacred shores of 
the Lake of Gennesareth.j- There was in the Middle Ages a 
fish called " the Paschal pickerel," from the tradition that the 
Lord had in the Last Supper substituted a fish for the Paschal 
lamb. J In the Cathedral of Salerno there is a picture of the 
Last Supper (in the sacristy) with a fish. It disappeared from 
the Christian monuments altogether at the end of the fifth 
century, and is common only in the second and third. It has 
now entirely vanished, and the recollection of it has been 
obliterated by the symbolism to which it has given birth. Just 
as the ordinary form of the cake furnished occasion for the 
fanciful interpretation that it was the likeness of the thirty 
pieces for which the Betrayal was made, and the water and 
wine (the ordinary mode of drinking wine) was made to sym- 
bolize the water and the blood, or the double nature, or the 
two Testaments, so the fish was in the fourth century inter- 
preted by a curious acrostic to be our Lord himself — Ir/Gov? 
XpiGtoS Qeov TioZ ^ODtrfp.% This interpretation, which 
first appears J in Optatus of Milevis (a.d. 384), was not known 
in earlier times, and was very imperfectly recognized even by 
Augustine. The fish itself, if as we may suppose it formed 
part of the original and primitive ordinance, is one of those 
particulars of sacred antiquity which are gone beyond recall. 
Not a trace of it exists in the New Testament. It is gone from 
all celebrations of the Eucharist, as the water from the wine in 
Protestant celebrations, as the wine from the bread in Roman 
administrations. 

V. One more trace of the social festive character of the 

* Busk's Folk Lore of Rome, 174. 

t Renan, Vie de Jesus, 303; Spic. Solesmiense, iii. 568. 

i Gunton's History of Peterborough, p. 337. 

§ Northcote, 210-15. 

I Wharton Marriott's Essay on the Fish of Autun. 



THE EUCHARIST IN THE EARLY CHURCH. 47 

original ordinance was the table. To the question whether it 
was ever called an altar in those ages we will return Th 
presently. But there is no doubt that it was always 
of wood, and that the mensa or rpane^a was its ordinary 
name. In the representations in the catacombs, it is as if a 
circular table.* In the earliest forms of churches, whether as 
in the small chapels in the catacombs, or as in the great basili- 
cas of Rome, or in the Eastern churches, it stood and stands in 
front of the apse. This in Western churches was superseded 
in later times by stone structures fastened to the east end of 
the church. But in the Protesant churches, both Reformed 
and Lutheran, the wooden structure and the detached position 
were retained, and in the English and Scottish churches, both 
Episcopal and Presbyterian, wooden tables were brought at 
the time of the Holy Communion into the middle of the 
church. There was only this difference in their position from 
that in the Primitive Church, that in the English Church they 
were placed lengthwise, the officiating minister standing in the 
middle of the side facing the people. On this arrangement all 
the rubrics are founded, and, curiously enough, were not altered, 
when, after Laud's time, the position of the table was again 
brought back to what it had been before the Reformation. 
Deerhurst church in Gloucestershire alone retains for it the po- 
sition which was given in the time of Edward VI. Thus while 
the position of the Holy Table in England is now conformable 
to the mediaeval practice of the Latin Church, the rubric 
which speaks of "the north side," which is no longer capable 
of being observed, remains the sole relic in our service of the 
conformity with which it was intended to be brought with the 
primitive usage. 

VI. We have now reached the last trace of the social, and, 
as it may be called, secular character of the primitive Euchar- 
ist. We pass to the forms by which, no doubt from The posture 
the first, but increasing as time rolled on, the relip;- and position 

,, & ., i • -1 • i -i 1 °* tne min- 

lOHS or sacred character with which it had been ister. 

invested was brought out into words, and in doing so we are at 

once brought into the presence of all that we know of the 

early Christian worship. The Liturgy, properly speaking, was 

* See the various authorities quoted in Kenan's St. Paul, 266. 



48 CHRISTIAN INSTITUTIONS. 

the celebration of the Holy Communion. The worship of the 
early Christians gathered round this as the nucleus. We 
must picture to ourselves the scene according to the arrange- 
ment which has been clearly described. The Bishop, or Pre- 
siding Minister, as he is called by Justin Martyr, is on his lofty 
seat behind the table, overlooking it, facing the congregation, 
who stood on the other side of it in front of him. The other 
ministers, if there were any — probably Deacons — sat or stood 
in a semicircle immediately beneath and around him. This 
position is now almost entirely lost. The Pope to a certain 
degree keeps it up, as he always, in celebrating mass, stands 
behind the altar, facing the people. The arrangements of 
ancient churches, like that of Torcello, at Venice, though long 
disused, are proofs of the ancient custom. The nearest like- 
ness is to be seen in the Scottish Presbyterian Church, where 
the minister, from his lofty pulpit behind the table, addresses 
the congregation, with his elders beneath him on the pulpit 
stairs, or round its base. The dress of the bishop and clergy 
who are to officiate, except by mere accident, in no way 
distinguishes them from the congregation in front of them.* 
The prayers are uttered throughout standing, and with 
outstretched hands. The posture of devotion was stand- 
ing, as is the universal practice in the East. The outstretched 
hands are open in Mussulman devotions, as also in the cata- 
combs. They express the hope of receiving into them the 
blessing from above. Of the outstretched hands a reminiscence 
was very long present in the benediction — manibus exten- 
sis\ — of the priest. As in other cases, so here, when the 
original meaning was lost, this simple posture was mystically 
explained as the extension of the hands of Christ on the cross. I 
Of this standing posture of the congregation which still pre- 
vails throughout the East, all traces have disappeared in the 
Western Church, except in the attitude of the officiating min- 
ister at the Eucharist, and in the worship of the Presbyterian 
Churches always. Its extinction is the more remarkable, 

* See the case, as discussed by Cardinal Bona, and the futility of the argu- 
ments by which he endeavors to refute the mass of authority on the other 
side. 

t Maskell, p. 79. The last trace of it in England is in the Life of St. Dun- 
stan. 

J Ibid. 



THE EUCHARIST IN THE EARLY CHURCH. 49 

because it was enjoined by the only canon of the Council of 
Nicaje, which related to public worship, and which ordered 
that on every Sunday (whatever license might be permitted on 
other days) and on every day between Easter and Pentecost 
kneeling should be forbidden and standing enjoined. In the 
controversy between the Church and the Puritans in the sev- 
enteenth century, there was a vehement contention whether 
kneeling at the Sacrament should be permitted. . It was the 
point on which the Church most passionately insisted, and 
which the Puritans most passionately resisted. The Church 
party in this were resisting the usage of ancient Catholic 
Christendom, and disobeying the Canon of the First (Ecumen- 
ical Council, to which they professed the most complete, ad- 
hesion. The Puritans, who rejected the authority of either, 
were m the most entire conformity with both. 

VII. Another element of the worship was the reading of 
the Scriptures. This has continued in most Christian Churches, 
but m none can it be said to occupy the same sol- 
emn prominence as in early times, when it was a t&sSfp?* 
continuation of the tradition of reading the Law tures - 
and the Prophets in the Jewish synagogues. A trace of this 
is visible in the ambones— the magnificent reading-desks of the 
early Roman churches, from which the Gospel and Epistle 
were read. Long were these preserved in Italian churches 
alter the use of them had been discontinued. Nothing can be 
more splendid than the ambones in the church at Ravello near 
Amain, which though long deserted remain a witness to the 
predominant importance attributed in ancient times to the 
reading of the Bible in the public service. In the French 
Church the very name of the lofty screens which parted the 
nave from the choir bears testimony to the same principle. 
They were called Jube from the opening words of the introduc- 
tion of the Gospel Jube, Domine. Those that still exist, like 
tlfJT an Af S °. in ^ e king's College Chapel at Aber- 
deen,* by their stately height and broad platforms, show how 
imposing must have been this part of the service, now so 
humiliated and neglected. Few such now remain. The pas- 
si on for revolutionary equality on o ne side and ecclesiastical 

d 



50 CHRISTIAN INSTITUTIONS. 

uniformity on the other have done their worst. They have 
now either disappeared altogether, or are never used for their 
original purpose. • 

In England the huge reading-desk or "pew" long supplied 
the place of the old ambo, but that is now being gradually 
swept away, and there only remains the lectern, in modern 
times reduced to so small a dimension as to be almost invisi- 
ble. 

The Prophets of the Old Testament, the Epistles of the New 
— chiefly St. Paul — were read from the lower step of the stair- 
case leading up to the ambo. In some churches the Gospel of 
Thomas and the first Epistle of Clement were added. The 
Gospel was from one of the four Gospels, and was read from 
the upper step, or sometimes from a separate ambo. Selections 
from the Scriptures were not fixed; each reader chose them at 
his discretion. There is an instance in France as late as the 
fifth century of their being chosen by opening the book at 
hazard. The reader was usually the deacon or subdeacon ; not, 
as with us, the chief clergyman present. Of this a trace 
remains in the English Church, especially in the Channel 
Islands, where laymen may read the lessons. The reader of 
the Gospel if possible faced, not as with us to the west, but to 
the south, because the men sat* on the south, and it was a 
fine idea that in a manly religion like Christianity the Gospel 
belonged especially to them. 

VIII. Then came the address, sometimes preached from one 
of the ambones, but more usually from the Bishop's seat 
behind the table. It was called a "Homily" or 
The Homily. «g ermon » — faab is, a conversation; not a speech or 
set discourse, but a talk, a homely colloquial instruction. The 
idea is still kept up in the French word conference. It is not 
possible that the sermon or homily should ever return to its 
original meaning. But it is well for us to remember what that 
meaning was. It was the talking, the conversation, of one 
Christian man with another: the practical address, as Justin 
Martyr says, exhorting the people to the imitation of the good 
things that they have just had read to them from the Bible ; 
the mutual instruction which is implied in animated discussion. 



* Ordo Bom. ii. 8 (see Dictionary of Antiquities). 



THE EUCHARIST IN THE EARLY CHURCH. 51 

It is, in short, the very reverse of what is usually meant bv a 
"homily." J 

Thus far any one might attend at the worship. In the 
Christian Church of the early times, before infant baptism had 
become common, a large part of the congregation consisted of 
unbaptized persons, and when the time for the more sacred 
part of the service came, they were warned off. There is a 
part of the service of the Eastern Church when the deacon 
comes forward and says, "The doors, the doors!" meaning 
that all who are not Christians are to go away and the doors 
are to be shut. But they do not go away, and the doors— at 
least, the doors of the church — are not shut. 

IX. The solemn service opened with a practice which 
belong^ to the childlike joyous innocence of the early ages, 
and which as such was upheld as absolutely essen- 
tial to the Christian worship, but which now has, The Kiss ' 
with one exception, disappeared from the West, and with two 
exceptions from the East. It was the kiss of peace. Justin 
mentions it as the universal mode of opening the service. It 
came down direct from the Apostolic time.* Sometimes the 
men kiss the men, the women the women; sometimes it was 
without distinction. But it was thought so essential that to 
abstain from it was a mark of mourning or excessive austerity. 
In the West this primitive practice now exists only in the 
small Scottish sect of the Glassites or Sandemanians. In the 
Latin Church, it was continued till the end of the thirteenth 
century, and was then transferred to the close of the service. 
In its place was then substituted a piece of the altar furniture 
called a Pax, and this was given to the deacon with the words 
"Pax hbi\ et ecclesice." This is a singular instance of the 
introduction of a purely mechanical and mediaeval contrivance 
instead of a living social observance.^ The only trace of it 
remaining in the English service is the final benediction, which 
begins with the words " The peace of God." In the Eastern 
Church it still remains to some extent. In the Russian Church, 

ana necfcet, to the question whether " the kiss " had fairly been given. 



52 CHRISTIAN INSTITUTIONS. 

perhaps in other Eastern Churches, the clergy kiss each other 
during the recital of the Nicene Creed, to show that charity 
and orthodoxy should always go together, not, as is too often 
the case, parted asunder. In the Coptic Church, the m ost prim- 
itive and conservative of all Christian Churches, it still con- 
tinues in full force. Travellers now living have had their faces 
stroked, and been kissed, by the Coptic priest, in the cathedral 
at Cairo, whilst at the same moment everybody else was kiss- 
ing everybody throughout the church. Had any primitive 
Christians been told that the time would come when this, the 
very sign of Christian brotherhood and sisterhood, would be 
absolutely proscribed in the Christian Church, they would have 
thought that this must be the result of unprecedented persecu- 
tion or unprecedented unbelief. It is impossible to imagine 
the omission of any act more sacred, more significant, more 
necessary (according to the view which then prevailed) to the 
edification of the service. 

X. Then came the offering of the bread and wine by the 
people. It was, as we have seen, the memorial of the ancient 
practice of the contribution of the Christian com- 
munity towards a common meal. The prayer in 
which this was offered was in fact the centre of the whole ser- 
vice. This is the point at which we first come into contact 
with the germ of a fixed Liturgy.* It has been often main- 
tained that there are still existing forms which have come down 
to us from the first century, and even that the Liturgies which 
go under the names of St. James, St. Clement, and St. Mark 
were written by them. There are two fatal objections to this' 
hypothesis. The first is the positive statement f of St. Basil 
that there was no written authority for any of the Liturgical 
forms of the Church in his time. The second is the fact that 

* An argument often used to account for the absence of written liturgies is 
the doctrine of "reserve," an argument which has been even pushed to the 
extent of thus accounting for the absence of any detailed account of th« ; Sacra- 
ment in the New Testament or in the early Creeds. (Maskell, Preface to the 
Ancient Liturgy, pp. xxviii.-xxxi.) It is evident that the same feeli ng, if it 
operated at all, would have prevented such descriptions as are given by Justin, 
in a work avowedly intended for the outside world. 

+ De Spiritu Sancto, c. 27. The passage is quoted at length in MasJ cell (Pref . 
p. xxvi.) with the opinions strongly expressed to the same effect, of Renaudot 
and Lebrun, and the confirmatory argument that had written liturgies existed 
they would have been discoverable in the time of the Diocletian pe rsecution. 
" There are no Liturgies," says Lebrun, " earlier than the fifth century " (iii. 
1-17). 



THE EUCHARIST IS THE EARLY CHURCH. 53 

whilst there is a general resemblance in the ancient Liturgies 
to the forms known to exist in early times, there are such 
materi.al variations from those forms as to render it impossible 
to suppose that the exact representatives of them anywhere 
exist. This will appear as we proceed, and therefore we shall 
only notice the details of the Liturgies so far as. they contain 
the rolics of the earlier state of things, or illustrate the changes 
which, have brought us to the present state of Liturgical obser- 
vances. 

The Prayer was spoken by the Bishop or Chief Presbyter, 
as best he could — that is, as it would seem, not written, but 
spoken.* It is thus the first sanction of extempore prayer in 
the public service of the Church. But extempore prayer 
always tends to become fixed or Liturgical. If we hear the 
usual Prayers in the Church of Scotland, they are sure to 
retain on the whole the same ideas, and often the very same 
words. Thus it was in the early Church, and thus a Liturgy 
arose. 

There was one long prayer, of which the likenesses are pre- 
served in the long prayers before or after the sermon in 
Presbyterian or Nonconformist churches, the Bidding Prayer 
and the Prayer of Consecration in the Church of England. 
The main difference is that in the early Church this prayer was 
all on one occasion, namely, at the time of the consecration of 
the elements ; in the Roman and in the English Prayer Book 
it is, as it were, scattered through the service. 

In this prayer there are two peculiarities which belong to 
the ancient Church, and have since not been brought forward 
prominently in any church. It is best seen in the Roman 
Missal, which incorporates here, as elsewhere, passages quite 
inconsistent with the later forms with which it has been in- 
crusted. 

It is clear, from the Missal, that the priest officiates as one 
of the people, and as the representative of the people, seeing 
that throughout the Office of the Mass he associates the people 
with himself as concerned equally with himself in every prayer 
that he offers and every act that he performs. Just as he 
unites the people's prayers with his own by the use of the 



* Justin, Apol. c. 67. 



54 CHRISTIAN INSTITUTIONS. 

plural forms, " We pray," " We beseech Thee," instead of the 
singular, so in the most solemn acts of the Eucharist, after the 
consecration of the elements as well as before, he uses the 
plural form, " We offer," that is, we, priest and people, offer ; 
thereby including the people with himself in the act of sacrific- 
ing. And this is made still more clear when he is told to say, 
" We beseech Thee that Thou wouldest graciously accept this 
offering of Thy whole family, and also we Thy servants and 
also Thy holy people offer to Thy glorious Majesty a pure 
sacrifice." And not only so, but the attention of the people 
is called to it as a fact which it is desirable they should not be 
allowed to forget. Addressing the people the priest says, 
" All you, both brethren and sisters, pray that my sacrifice and 
your sacrifice, which is equally yours as well as mine, may be 
meet for the Lord." And so in the intercessory prayer of 
oblation for the living the language which the priest uses care- 
fully shows that the sacrificial act is not his but theirs. 
" Remember," he says, " Thy servants and Thy handmaids, and 
all who stand around, and who offer to Thee this sacrifice of 
praise for themselves and for all their relations." 

But there is the further question of what is the chief offer- 
ing which is presented. The offering which is presented is, 
The offering throughout, one of two things : first the sacrifice of 
of the bread praise and thanksgiving, as in the words which we 
an wine. h ave already quoted ; or secondly, the gifts of the 
fruits of the earth, especially the bread and wine, which are 
brought in, and which are expressly called " a holy sacrifice," 
and "the immaculate host." Every term which is applied to 
the elements after consecration is distinctly and freely applied 
to them before. What is done by the consecration in the Missal 
is the prayer that these natural elements of the earth may be 
transformed to our spiritual use by the blessing of God upon 
them. It is* necessary to observe that the sacrifice offered, 
whether in the early Church or m the original Roman Missal, 
was either of praise and thanksgiving, which we still offer, both 
clergy and people, or else of the natural fruits of the earth, 
which we do indeed offer in name, but of which the full idea 
and meaning has so much passed out of the minds of all 
Christians in modern days, that we seldom think of it. It is 
one of the differences between the early Church and our own, 



THE EUCHARIST IN THE EARLY CHURCH. 55 

which it is impossible to recover, but which it is necessary to 
bear in mind, both because the idea was in itself exceedingly- 
beautiful, and because it does not connect itself in the least 
degree with any of our modern controversies.* 

The ancient form expresses in the strongest manner the 
goodness of God in Nature. It is we might almost say a 
worship — or more properly, an actual enjoyment and thankful 
recognition — of the gifts of Creation. So completely was 
this felt in the early times, that a custom prevailed, which as 
time went on was checked by the increasing rigidity of eccle- 
siastical rules, that not only bread and wine,f but honey, 
milk, strong drink, and birds were offered on the altar ; and 
even after these were forbidden, ears of corn and grapes were 
allowed, and other fruits, though not offered on the altars, 
were given to the Bishop and Presbyters. 

All this appears in unmistakable force both in the heathen 
and the Jewish worship, and from them it overflowed into the 
Christian, and received there an additional life, from the ten- 
dency which, as we have seen, runs through the whole of these 
early forms to identify the sacred and profane, to elevate the 
profane by making it sacred, and to realize the sacred by 
making it common. It lingers in a few words in the English 
Prayer for the Church Militant, "the oblations which we offer," 
and in the expression "It is very meet and right to give 
thanks." It included the recollection of, and the prayers for, 
the main objects of human interest — the Emperor, the army, 
their friends dead and living, the rain, the springs and wells 
so dear in Eastern countries, the rising of the Nile so dear in 
Egypt, the floods to be deprecated at Constantinople. The 
whole of their common life was made to pass before them. 
Nothing was "common or unclean" to them at that moment. 
They gave thanks for it, they hoped that it might be blessed 
and continued to them. \ 

There is a representation in the catacombs of a man and a 
woman joining in the offering of bread. The woman, it is 
sometimes said, is the Church; but if so this confirms the 



* The Mass disowned by the Missal. A very able and exhaustive paper in the 
Madras Times, by Bishop Caldwell, Oct. 1867. 
t Apostolical Canons, 2. 
X See Bunsen, Christianity and Mankind, vii. 24. 



56 CHRISTIAN INSTITUTIONS. 

same idea. The bread and wine are still in England, as above 
noticed, the gifts not of the minister, but of the parish, and 
this offering by the congregation, which prevailed in the 
Catholic countries of Europe generally till the tenth century, 
lingered on in some French abbeys till the eighteenth. It is 
this offering of the fruits of the earth to which Cyprian * and 
Irenaeus f give the name of " sacrifice." It is probable that 
the tenacity with which this word clung to these outward 
elements in the early ages was occasioned by the eagerness to 
claim for Christian worship something which resembled the 
old animal and vegetable sacrifices of Judaism and heathenism, 
and that its comparative disappearance from all Christian wor- 
ship in later times in like manner was coincident with the 
disappearance of the temples and altars alike of Palestine and 
of Italy. 

This offering formed the main bulk of the prayer. Then 
followed what in modern times would be called " the consecra- 
The Lord's tion." The earlier accounts of the Liturgy, whether 
Prayer. [ n J us tin or Irenseus, agree in the statement that 
after the completion of the offering followed an invocation to 
the Spirit of God "to make the bread and wine the body and 
blood of Christ." But in what did it consist? Here again 
seems to be disclosed a divergence of which very slight traces 
remain in any celebrations of the Eucharist, whether Protest- 
ant or Catholic. It is at least probable that it consisted of 
nothing else than the Lord's Prayer. This was the immense 
importance of the Lord's Prayer; not as with us, repeated 
many times over, but reserved for this one prominent place. 
The first Eucharistic prayer was amplified more or less accord- 
ing to the capacities of the minister. The Lord's Prayer was 
the one fixed formula. It was in fact the whole " liturgy " 
properly so called. " The change "- — whatever it were that he 
meant by it — " the change of the bread and wine into the 
body and blood of Christ," says Justin, " is by the Word of 
Prayer which comes from Him." J " It was the custom," 

* Cyprian, De Op. p. 203, ed. Tell. (Palmer's Antiquities, ii. 86). 

t See the Pfaffian fragment of Irenseus quoted in Arnold's Fragments on the 
Church, p. 129 ; and this, with all the other passages from Irenseus bearing on 
the question in Bunsen's Christianity and Mankind, ii. 424-29. 

% Compare Justin, Apol. 66; Jerome, Adv. Pelag. 3: " Apostolos quotidie 
Orationem Domini solitos dicere." (Maskell, Pref. p. xxxviii.) See also Am- 



THE EUCHARIST Iff THE EARLY CHURCH. 57 

says Gregory the First, "of the Apostles to consecrate the 
oblation only by the Lord's Prayer." There is a trace of its 
accommodation to this purpose of giving a moral and spiritual 
purport to the natural gifts in the variation recorded by Ter- 
tullian, where,* instead of "Thy kingdom come," it is "May 
Thy Holy Spirit come upon us and purify us." It is also 
obvious that " Give us this day our daily bread " would thus 
gain a peculiar significance. " Lead us not into temptation, 
but deliver us from evil," had also a peculiar stress laid upon 
it.f It also lingers in the Consecration Prayer of the Eastern 
Church, where the petition for the coming of the Spirit is 
amplified, and made the chief point in the consecration. In 
the East the whole congregation joined in the Lord's PrayerJ 
and thus participated in the consecration. In the Coptic 
Church, accordingly, the Lord's Prayer is the only part of the 
service which is recited in Arabic — the vulgar tongue. § In 
the Russian Church it is sung by the choir ; and of all the 
impressive effects produced by the magnificent swell of human 
voices in the Imperial Chapel of the Winter Palace of St. 
Petersburg, none is greater than the recitation of the Lord's 
Prayer by the choir without, while the consecration goes for- 
ward within. In the Mozarabic Liturgy the people said Amen 
to every clause except the fourth, where they said, Quia es 
Deus.\\ In the West the priest alone recited it. But both in 
the East and the West the consecration was not complete till 
it had been ratified in the most solemn way by the congrega- 
tion. For it was at this point that there came, like the peal 
of thunder, the one word which has lasted through all changes 
and all Liturgies — the word which was intended to express 
the entire, truthful assent of the people to what was done and 
said — Amen. 

Then came forward the deacons and gave the bread, the 



brosiaster, De Sacramentis, iv. 4: "consecrated by the words of Christ." 
Bunsen, vii. 15, 55; ii. 177. 

* Adv. Marcion, iv. 21. 

t Cardinal Bona (Rer. Lit. i. 5) and Mr. Maskell (Preface, pp. xx.-xxii.) 
endeavor to attenuate the force of this passage by quoting passages from 
Walafridus Strabo and later writers, and by their own conjectures, that " at 
least the words of the institution were also recited." . But of this there is not 
a trace, either in Gregory or Justin. Bunsen, vii. 12i. 

X Ibid. vii. 280. 

§ Renaudot, Lit. Or. i. 262. | Les Anciennes Liturgies, p. 671. 

3* 



£8 CEBI8T1AN INSTITUTIONS. 

water and the wine to all who were present, and then to those 
who were absent. The latter half of the practice has perished 
everywhere. For what is called the " reservation," or even 
taking the sacramental elements to the occasional sick, is evi- 
dently a totally different practice from that of enabling the 
absent members of the community to join in the ordinance itself. 

These are the original elements of the Christian Liturgy. 
The Lord's Prayer, which was thus once conspicuous, has lost 
its place. In the Roman Church, as well as the Eastern, in 
spite of the efforts of Gregory the Great, it now follows the 
Prayer of Consecration.* In the Clementine Liturgy it is 
omitted altogether. j- In the first English Liturgy of Edward 
VI., as in that introduced by Laud into Scotland, it occurs 
after the Prayer of Consecration, but still before the admin- 
istration. In the present Liturgy it is separated from the 
Consecration Prayer altogether ; though on the other hand, as 
if to give it more dignity, it is twice repeated. 

The sacramental words have passed through three stages : 
first, the Lord's Prayer; then in the East, the Prayer of Invo- 
cation ; then in the West, the words of institution. J There 
is a spiritual meaning in each of these three forms. The 
original form was the most spiritual of all. The Western 
form, though excellent as bringing out the commemorative 
character of the sacrament, is perhaps the most liable to fall 
into a mechanical observance. This has been reached in the 
fullest degree, in the opinion which has been entertained in 
the Roman Church that the words must be recited by the 
priest secretly, lest laymen overhearing them should indiscreet- 
ly repeat them over ordinary bread and wine, and thus in- 
advertently transform them into celestial substances. Such an 
incident, it was believed, had actually taken place in the case 
of some shepherds who thus changed their bread and wine in 
a field into flesh and blood, and were struck dead by a divine 
judgment. § 

* Neale, Introd. 570, 622. 

t See the long and strange arguments to account for this in Palmer, i. 40, 
and Maskell, Pref. xxxviii. 

% The Western Church has not used a Prayer of Invocation for a thousand 
years. How exclusively Western is the notion that the words of institution 
have the effect of consecration is clear from the authorities quoted in Maskell, 
pp. cv., cvi., cxv. 

§ See the authorities quoted in Maskell, Preface, p. ciii. 



THE EUCHABIST IN THE EARLY CHURCH. 59 

This is tlie summary of the celebration of the early Sacra- 
ment, so far as we can attach it to the framework furnished 
by Justin. But there are a few fragments of ancient worship, 
which, though we cannot exactly adjust their place, partly 
belong to the second century. Some have perished, and some 
continue. In the morning was an antistrophic hymn (perhaps 
the germ of the " Te Deum ") to Christ * as God, and also the 
sixty-third Psalm. In the evening there was the hundred and 
forty-first Psalm.f The evening hymn on bringing in the 
candles, as now in Mussulman countries, is a touching remi- 
niscence of the custom in the Eastern Church. The " Sursum 
corda" ("Lift up your hearts"), and the "Holy, holy, holy," 
were parts of the hymns of which we find traces in the 
accounts of all the old Liturgies. The " Gloria in excelsis " 
was sung at the beginning of the service. Down to the 
beginning of the eleventh century, it was (except on Easter 
Day) only said by Bishops.]; 

This survey brings before ns the wide diversity and yet 
unity of Christian worship. That so fragile an ordinance 
should have survived so many shocks, so many superstitions, 
so many centuries, is in itself a proof of the immense vitality 
of the religion which it represents — of the prophetic insight of 
its Founder. 



* Pliny, Ep. x. 97. t Bunsen, ii. 50. % Maskell, p. 25. 



60 CHRISTIAN INSTITUTIONS. 



CHAPTER IV. 

THE EUCHARISTIC SACRIFICE. 

It is proposed to bring out in more detail what is meant by 
Sacrifice in the Christian Church. In order to do this, we 
must first understand what is meant by it, first in the Jewish 
and Pagan dispensations, and secondly in the Christian dis- 
pensation. 

I. We hardly think sufficiently what was the nature of an 
ancient sacrifice. Let us conceive the changes which would 
be necessary in any church in order to make it fit for such a 
ceremony. In the midst of an open court, so that the smoke 
of the fire and the odors of the slain animals might go 
up into the air, as from the hearths of our ancient baro- 
nial or collegiate halls, stood the Altar — a huge platform 
— detached from all around, and with steps approaching it 
from behind and from before, from the right and from the 
left. Around this structure, as in the shambles of a great 
city, were collected, bleating, lowing, bellowing, the oxen, 
sheep, and goats, in herds and flocks, which one by one were 
led up to the altar, and with the rapid stroke of the sacrificer's 
knife, directed either by the king or priest, they received their 
death-wounds. Their dead carcasses lay throughout the court, 
the pavement streaming with their blood, their quivering 
flesh placed on the altar to be burnt, the black columns of 
smoke going up to the sky, the remains afterwards consumed 
by the priests or worshippers who were gathered for the 
occasion as to an immense banquet.* 

This was a Jewish sacrifice. This, with slight variation, 
was the form of heathen sacrifice also. This is still the form 
of sacrifice in the great Mohammedan Sanctuary-)- at Mecca. 
This — except that the victims were not irrational animals, but 

* See an exhaustive account of the matter in Ewald's Alterthumer, pp. 
39-84. 
t Burton's Pilgrimage to Mecca. 



THE ETJCHARISTIC SACRIFICE. 61 

human beings — was the dreadful spectacle presented in the 
sacred inclosure at Coomassie, in Ashantee, as it was in the 
Carthaginian and Phoenician temples of old time. 

II. All these sacrifices, in every shape or form, have long 
disappeared from the religions of the civilized world. Already, 
under the ancient dispensation, the voices of Psalm- substitution 
ist and Prophet had been lifted up against them, of new ideas. 
"Sacrifice and meat-offering Thou wouldest not;" "Thinkest 
thou that I will eat bull's flesh or drink the blood of goats ;" 
" I delight not in the blood of bullocks, or of lambs, or of 
he-goats;" "I will not accept your burnt-offerings or your 
meat-offerings, neither will I regard the peace-offerings of 
your fat beasts." 

Has sacrifice then entirely ceased out of religious worship ? 
And had those old sacrifices no spiritual meaning hid under 
their mechanical, their strange, must we not even say their 
revolting, forms ? 

In themselves they have entirely ceased. Of all the forms 
of ancient worship they are the most repugnant to our feel- 
ings of humane and of Divine religion. But there was in 
these, as in most of the ceremonies of the old world, a higher 
element which it has been the purpose of Christianity to bring- 
out. In point of fact, the name of " Sacrifice" has survived, 
after the form has perished. 

Let us for a moment go back to the ancient sacrifices, and 
ask what was their object. It was, in one word, an endeavor, 
whether from remorse, or thankfulness, or fear, to approach 
the Unseen Divinity. It was an attempt to propitiate, to 
gratify, the Supreme Power, by giving up something dear to 
ourselves which was also dear to Him, — to feed, to nourish, 
as it were, the great God above by the same food by which 
we also are fed, — to send measages to him by the smoke, the 
sweet-smelling odor which went up from the animals which 
the sacrificer had slain or caused to be slain. The one purpose 
which is given after every sacrifice in the first chapter of 
Leviticus * is that it " shall make a sweet savor unto the 
Lord." 

Now, in the place of this gross, earthly conception of the 

* Lev. i. 13, 27; ii. 2, 12; iii. 8, 26. 



62 CHRISTIAN INSTITUTIONS. 

approach, of man to God, arose gradually three totally differ- 
ent ideas of approaching God, which have entirely superseded 
the old notion of priest and altar and victim and hecatomb 
and holocaust and incense, and to which, because of their tak- 
ing the place of those ancient ceremonies, the name of sacri- 
fice has in some degree been always applied. 

1. The first is the elevation of the heart towards God in 
prayer and thanksgiving. In the ancient Jewish and Pagan 
Pra d P u ^^ c worship, there was, properly speaking, no 
thanks- prayer and no praise. Whatever devotion the 
giving. people expressed was only through the dumb 

show of roasted flesh and ascending smoke and frag- 
rance of incense. But the Psalmist and Prophets in- 
troduced the lofty spiritual thought, that there was 
something much more acceptable to the Divine nature, 
much more capable of penetrating the Sanctuary of the Un- 
seen, — than these outward things, — namely, the words and 
thoughts of the divine speech and intellect of man. To these 
reasonable utterances, accordingly, by a bold metaphor, the 
Prophets transferred the phrase which had hitherto been used 
for the slaughter of beasts at the altar. In the 141st Psalm, 
the Psalmist says, " Let the lifting up of my hands in prayer 
be to Thee as the evening sacrifice," that is, let the simple 
peaceful act of prayer take the place of the blood-stained 
animal, struggling as in the hands of the butcher. In the 50th 
Psalm, after repudiating altogether the value of dead bulls and 
goats, the Psalmist says, "Whosoever offereth, — whosoever 
brings up as a victim to God, — thankful hymns of praise, he it 
is that honoreth Me." In the 51st Psalm, after rejecting alto- 
gether burnt -offerings and sacrifices for sin, the Psalmist says, 
" the true sacrifice of God," far more than this, " is a broken 
and contrite heart." This was a mighty change, and it has 
gone on growing ever since. The psalms of the Psalmists, 
the prayers of the Prophets, took the place of the dead ani- 
mals which the priests had slain. The worship of the Syna- 
gogue, which consisted only of prayer and praise, superseded 
the worship of the Temple, which consisted almost entirely of 
slaughtering and burning ; and the worship of the Christian 
Church, which consisted also only of prayer and praise, super- 
seded both Temple and Synagogue. As it has sometimes been 



THE EUCHARI8TIC SACRIFICE. 63 

said that the invention of printing inflicted a deathblow on 
mediaeval architecture, so much more did the discovery, the 
revelation, of prayer and praise, kill the old institution of 
sacrifice. 

It would have seemed strange to an old Jewish or Pagan 
worshipper to be told that the Deity would be more intimately 
approached by a word or a series of words, invisible to sense 
or touch, than by the tangible, material shapes of fat oxen or 
carefully reared sheep. Yet so it is; and however much 
modern thought may disparage the use of articulate prayer, yet 
there is no one who will not say that the marvellous faculty of 
expressing the various shades of mental feeling in the grandest 
forms of human speech is not an immense advance on the ir- 
rational, inarticulate, mechanical work which made the place of 
worship a vast slaughter-house. 

2. Secondly, in the place of the early sacrifices, which were 
of no use to any one, or which were only of use as the great 
banquets of a civic feast, was revealed the truth charitable 
that the offerings acceptable to God were those efforts - 
which contributed to the good of mankind. Thus the Prophet 
Hosea tells us that " God will have mercy instead of sacri- 
fice." The Proverbs and the Book of Tobit tell us that sins 
are purged away, not by the blood of senseless animals, but by 
kindness to the poor. Beneficent, useful, generous schemes 
for the good of mankind are the substitutes for those useless 
offerings of the ancient world. And because such beneficent 
acts can rarely be rendered except at some cost and pain and 
loss to ourselves, the word " sacrifice " has gradually been ap- 
propriated in modern language to such cost and pain and loss. 
" Such an one did such an act," we say, " but it was a great 
sacrifice for him." 

3. And this leads to the third or chief truth which has 
sprung up in place of the ancient doctrine of sacrifices. It is 
that the sacrifice which God values more than seif-sacri- 
anything else is the willing obedience of the fice 
heart to the eternal law of truth and goodness — the 
willing obedience, even though it cost life and limb, 
and blood and suffering and death. The Psalmist, after 
saying that "Sacrifice and offering for sin were not re- 
quired," declared that in the place thereof, "Lo, I come to do 



64 CHRISTIAN INSTITUTIONS. 

Thy will, O my God." The Prophets declared that to obey 
was better than sacrifice, and to " hearken " to God's laws was 
better than the fattest portions of rams or of oxen ; that " to 
^ do justly and walk humbly was more than rivers of oil or ten 
thousands of burnt-offerings." The sacrifice, the surrender of 
self, the fragrance of a holy and upright life, was the innermost 
access to the Divine nature, of which every outward sacrifice, 
however costly, was but a poor and imperfect shadow. This is 
the true food fit for the Holy Spirit of God, because it is the 
only sustaining food of the best spirit of man. 

These three things then, the lifting up of the heart in 
words of devotion to God, the performance of kindly and use- 
ful deeds to men, and the dedication of self, are the three 
things by which the Supreme Goodness and Truth, according 
to true Religion, is pleased, propitiated, satisfied. 

III. In the great exemplar and essence of Christianity, these 
three things are seen in perfection. 

In Jesus Christ there was the complete lifting up of the soul 

lift d *° ^*°^~ m P ra y er > °^ wmcn He was Himself the 
in Jesus most perfect example, and of which He has given 
Christ. us the* most perfect pattern. The Lord's Prayer 

is the sweet-smelling incense of all churches and of all na- 
tions. 

In Jesus Christ, who went about doing good, who lived and 
died for the sake of man, there was the most complete benefi- 
cence, compassion, and love. 

In Jesus Christ, who lived not for Himself, but for others ; 
who shed His blood that man might come to God : whose meat, 
whose food, whose daily bread it was " to do His Father's will," 
and whose whole life and death was summed up in the words, 
" Not My will, but Thine be done," was the most complete in- 
stance of that self-denial and self -dedication, which from Him 
has come to be called " self-sacrifice ;" and thus in Him all 
those anticipations and aspirations of the Psalmists and Proph- 
ets were amply and largely fulfilled. Thus by this true sacri- 
fice of Himself, He abolished forever those false sacrifices. 

IV. But here arises the question, How far can any sacrifice 
be continued in the Christian Church now ? This has been in 
part answered by showing what were the universal spiritual 
truths which the Prophets put in the place of the ancient sac- 



THE EUCHARISTIC SACRIFICE. 65 

rifices — and how these spiritual truths were fulfilled in the 
Founder of our religion. But it may make the Thesacri- 
whole subject more clear if we show how these same christian 19 
truths are carried on almost in the same words by Church, 
the Apostles. The word " sacrifice " is not applied in any sense 
in the Gospels, unless, in the seventeenth chapter of St. John, 
the word " Consecrate " may be so read. But there are several 
cases in the other books in which it is employed in this sense. 
All Christians are " kings and priests." * All Christians can 
at all times offer those real spiritual sacrifices of which those 
old heathen and Jewish sacrifices were only the shadows and 
figures, and which could only be offered at stated occasions, by 
a particular order of men. When the word is used, it is used 
solely in those three senses of which we have been speaking. 

" Let us offer," says the Epistle to the Hebrews, " the sacri- 
fice of praise always to God, that is the fruit of lips giving 
thanks to His name." f This, the continual duty of thankful- 
ness, is the first sacrifice of the Christian Church. " To do 
good and to distribute forget not " (says the same Epistle), 
"for it is with such sacrifices^ that God is well pleased;" and 
again, St. Paul in the Epistle to the Philippians says of the 
contribution which his friends at Philippi had sent to him to 
assist him in sickness and distress, that it was "the odor of 
a sweet smell, a sacrifice acceptable, well-pleasing to God." 
This, the duty of Christian usefulness and beneficence, is the 
second sacrifice of the Christian Church. " I beseech you to 
present your bodies reasonable, holy and living sacrifices unto 
God." § This perpetual self-dedication of ourselves to the 
Supreme Good is the third and chief sacrifice of the Christian 
Church always and everywhere, and it is also the sense in 
which, in the Epistle to the Ephesians,|| Christ is said to have 
" given Himself for us an offering and a sacrifice to God for a 
sweet-smelling savor." 

In these three senses the Christian Religion, whilst destroy- 
ing utterly and forever all outward sacrifices, whether animal 
sacrifice or vegetable sacrifice or human sacrifice, is yet, in a 
moral and spiritual sense, sacrificial from beginning to end. 

* Rev. i. 6. t Heb. xiii. 15. % Heb. xiii. 16. 

§ Rom. xii. 1 ; comp. 1 Pet. ii. 5. 

S Eph. v. 2; compare Heb. ix. 14; x. 5-12. 



ffi CHRISTIAN INSTITUTIONS. 

Every position, every aspect of every true Christian, east or 
west, or north or south, in church or out of church, is a sacri- 
ficial position. Every Christian is, in the only sense in which 
the word is used in the New Testament, " a priest of good 
things to come," to offer up " spiritual sacrifices acceptable to 
God through Jesus Christ." Every domestic hearth, every 
holy and peaceful death-bed, every battle-field of duty, every 
arena of public or private life, is the altar from which the 
thoughts and energies of human souls and spirits ought to be 
forever ascending to the Father of all goodness. We are not 
to say that the use of the word " sacrifice " in this moral and 
spiritual sense is a metaphor or figure of speech, and that the 
use of the word in its gross and carnal sense is the substance. 
So far as there can be any sacrifice in the Christian Religion, 
it is the moral and spiritual sense which is the enduring sub- 
stance ; the material and carnal sacrifice was but the passing 
shadow. 

Y. But there may still arise an intermediate question, and 
that is — In what sense, over and above this complete and ideal 
sacrifice of our great Example, — over and above this essential 
sacrifice of our own daily lives, — in what sense is there any 
sacrifice in our outward worship, especially in the Holy Com- 
munion ? 

It is clear from what has been said, that in order to claim any 
share in the true Christian sacrifice, whether that rendered 
once for all by Jesus Christ, or that offered by all good Chris- 
tians in every hour of their lives, any sacrifice in our outward 
worship must belong to one or other of these three essential 
characteristics which we have mentioned, 1. Prayer and praise ; 
2. Beneficence ; 3. Self-devotion and self-dedication. 

1. The Sacrament of the Lord's Supper is certainly, as its 

name of " Eucharist " implies, as it is called in the English 

Communion Service, " a sacrifice of praise and 

of thanks- thanksgiving." It is this which makes us say in a 

giving. p art | ^ serv j ce? wn i cn belongs to its most 

ancient fragments, " It is very meet, right, and our bounden 
duty, that we should at all times and in all places, but chiefly 
now, give thanks to Thee." And in the ancient services . of 
the Church, of which only a very slight trace remains in our 
own, or in any Church now, this thanksgiving was yet further 



THE EUCHAMISTIC SACRIFICE. 67 

expressed by the Christian people bringing to the table the 
loaves of bread and the cups of wine, as samples of the fruits 
of the earth, for which every day and hour of their lives they 
wish to express their gratitude. In the English Church this is 
indicated only by the few words where in the Prayer for the 
Church Militant we say, " We (i.e. not the clergyman, but the 
people) offer unto Thee our oblations." In the Roman Church, 
this and this only was what was originally meant by the sacri- 
fice, the host, or offering; not a dead corpse, but the daily 
bread and wine of our earthly sustenance, offered not by the 
priest, but by the whole Christian congregation, as an expres- 
sion of their thankfulness for the gracious kindness of God our 
Father in His beautiful and bountiful creation. 

It is true that in a later part of the service, the bread and 
wine are made to represent, as in the Last Supper, the Body 
and Blood, that is, the inmost spirit of the dying Redeemer. 
But at the time of the service when in the Ancient Liturgies 
they were offered by the congregation and by the minister, 
and when they were called by the name of " sacrifice," or 
" victim," they represented only the natural products of the 
earth. It was as if the early Church had meant to say — " In 
Pagan and Jewish times there were human sacrifices, animal 
sacrifices. In Christian times this has ceased ; we wish to 
express to God our thankfulness for the daily bread that 
strengthens man's heart, and the wine that makes glad our 
hearts, and we express our gratitude by bringing our bread and 
wine for the common enjoyment and joint participation of the 
whole Christian community." 

2. This brings us to the second idea of sacrifice, that is, the 
rendering of acts of kindness to our brethren. The offering, 
the contribution of bread and wine which formed _ 
the original sacrifice or offering of the Eucharist, of benefi- 
essentially partook of this idea, because the Eucharist cence - 
in those early times was the common festive gathering of rich 
and poor in the same social meal, to which, as St. Paul 
enjoined, every one was to bring his portion. And further, 
with this practice, of which almost all traces have disappeared 
from all modern modes of administering the Lord's Supper, 
there was united from the earliest times the practice of collect- 
ing alms and contributions for the poor, at the time when our 



68 CHRISTIAN INSTITUTIONS. 

Christian communion and fellowship with each other is most 
impressed upon us. This is the practice which is called, in the 
English Church and others, the offertory, that is, the offerings, 
and which is urged upon us in the most moving passages that 
can be drawn from the Scriptures to stir up our Christian com- 
passion. Here again, it is clear that the sacrifice, the offering, 
is made not by the priest, not by the minister, but by the con- 
gregation. It is not the clergy who give alms or offerings for 
the people, it is the people who bring alms or offerings for one 
another or for the clergy. They make these sacrifices from 
their own substance, and in those sacrifices, so far as they come 
from a willing and bountiful heart, Cod is well pleased. 

3. The service of the Sacrament, in whatever form, expresses 
the sacrifice, the dedication of ourselves. Even if there were 
Thesacrifice not words to set this forth, it could not be other- 
of self. wise. Every serious communicant does at least for 

the moment intend to declare his resolution to lead a new life, 
and abandon his evil self. But in the English Reformed 
Church, this, the highest form of sacrifice, is, and was formerly 
much more than in the present form, brought out much more 
strongly than either in the Roman Church or in. most other 
Protestant Churches. There is a solemn Prayer at the close 
of the service, in which it is said, " Here we offer and present 
unto Thee ourselves, our souls and bodies, to be a reasonable, 
holy, and lively sacrifice unto Thee." But in the first Re- 
formed Prayer Book of Edward VI., this true spiritual Prot- 
estant sacrifice was even still more forcibly expressed, for this 
dedication of ourselves was not as now, at the close of the 
service, but was introduced into the very heart of the Conse- 
cration Prayer, and made the chief and turning-point of the 
whole Liturgy. It was this on which so much stress was 
always laid by one of the profoundest scholars and the most 
devout men of our time, of whom one of his friends used to 
say that he was essentially a Liturgical Christian — the late 
Chevalier Bunsen. It is this which is present in the Scottish 
and the American Prayer Books, and, contrary to the usual 
opinion entertained of them, places them in the foremost rank 
of Protestant forms of devotion. In this Prayer it is evident 
that this the most important of the sacrifices of Christian 
Religion is not offered by the clergy for the people, but is the 



THE EUCEARISTIC SACRIFICE. 69 

offering of the people by themselves ; that when the clergy- 
man says, " we offer," he speaks not of himself alone, but of 
himself only as one of them, with them, acting and speaking 
as their mouthpiece and representative, and they speaking and 
acting with him and for him. 

These are the three ideas, the three meanings of the sacri- 
fice of the Eucharist. There is no other sense of sacrifice in 
the Eucharist than these three, and these three meanings 
absorb all others.* No doubt the realities of sacrifice which 
they are intended to express are not there or in any outward 
sign, but in actual life, as when we speak of " a heavy sacri- 
fice," of " a self-sacrifice," and the like. But the outward sign 
reminds us of the spiritual reality, and often in the Lord's 
Supper the two are brought together. 

When we see the bread and wine, the gifts of the parish or 
people, placed on the Table, this should remind us of the deep 
and constant thankfulness that we ought to feel from morning 
till evening for the blessings of our daily bread, of our happy 
lives, — perhaps even of our daily sorrows and sicknesses and 
trials. 

When we drop into the plate our piece of gold or silver or 
copper, as the case may be, this prelude of the Lord's Supper, 
slight though it be, should remind us that the true Christian 
Communion requires as its indispensable condition true Chris- 
tian beneficence ; beneficence exercised not it may be at that 
moment, but always, and wherever we are, in the wisest, most 
effectual mode which Christian prudence and generosity can 
suggest. 

When we dedicate ourselves at the Table in remembrance 
of Him who dedicated Himself for us — when we come to Him 
in order to be made strong with His strength — the act, the 
words, the remembrance should remind us that not then only, 
but in all times and in all places ought the sweet-smelling 
savor of our lives to be ascending towards Him who delights 
above all things in a pure, holy, self-sacrificing heart and will. 



* By a strange solecism the Eucharist is sometimes called " a commemora- 
tive sacrifice." This is as if the Waterloo banquet were called " a commemo- 
orative battle." Still the sacrifice of Christ which it commemorates is of the 
same kind as the sacrifice of the "worshippers, viz. , the sacrifice of a spotless 
life for the good of others. 



70 CHRISTIAN INSTITUTIONS. 

Other ideas no doubt there are besides in the Eucharist. 
But so far as there is any idea of sacrifice, or thanksgiving, or 
offering to God, whether we take the English Prayer Book, or 
the older Liturgies out of which the Prayer Book is formed, 
it is the threefold idea which has been described, and not any 
of those imaginary sacrifices which, whether in the English or 
the Roman Church or in other churches, have been in modern 
days engrafted upon it. And this threefold sacrifice of prayer 
and praise, of generosity and of self- dedication, are in the 
Eucharist, because they pervade all Christian worship and life, 
of which the Eucharist is or ought to be the crowning repre- 
sentation and exemplification. 

Such are the ideas which, imperfectly and disproportion- 
ately, but yet sufficiently, pervade the early service of the 
Eucharist. 



THE MEAL PRESENCE. 71 



CHAPTER V. 

THE REAL PRESENCE. 

It might have been thought that in a religion like Chris- 
tianity, which is distinguished from Judaism and from Pagan- 
ism by its essentially moral and spiritual character, no doubt 
could have arisen on the material presence of its Founder. In 
other religions, the continuance of such a presence of the 
Founder is a sufficiently familiar idea. In Buddhism, the 
Lama is supposed still to be an incarnation of the historical 
Buddha. In Hinduism, Vishnu was supposed to be from 
time to time incarnate in particular persons. In the Greek 
and Roman worship, though doubtless with more confusion of 
thought, the Divinities were believed to reside in the particu- 
lar statues erected to their honor ; and the cells or shrines of 
the temples in which such statues were erected were regarded 
as " the habitations of the God." In Judaism, although here 
again with many protestations and qualifications, the " She- 
chineh " or glory of Jehovah was believed to have resided, 
at any rate till the destruction of the ark, within the inner- 
most sanctuary of the Temple. But in Christianity the reverse 
of this was involved in the very essence of the religion. Not 
only was the withdrawal of the Founder from earth recognized 
as an incontestable fact and recorded as such in the ancient 
creeds, but it is put forth in the original documents as a neces- 
sary condition for the propagation of His religion. "It is 
expedient for you that I go away." " If I go not away the 
Comforter will not come unto you." Whenever the phrase- 
ology of the older religions is for a moment employed in the 
Christian Scriptures, it is at once lifted into a higher sphere. 
" The temple " of the primitive Christian's object of worship, 
"the Altar" on which his praises were offered, was not in any 
outward building, but either in the ideal invisible world, or in 
the living frames and hearts of men. There are, indeed, 



72 CHRISTIAN INSTITUTIONS. 

numerous passages in the New Testament which speak of the 
continued presence of the Redeemer amongst His people. 
But these all are so evidently intended in a moral and spiritual 
sense that they have in fact hardly ever been interpreted in 
any other way. They all either relate to the communion 
which through His Spirit is maintained with the spirits of 
men, — as in the well-known texts, "I am with you always;" 
" Where two or three are gathered together in my name, there 
am I in the midst of them ;" " I will come to you ;" " Come 
unto Me, all ye that are weary and heavy laden," — or else 
they express that remarkable doctrine of Christianity, that 
the invisible God, the invisible Redeemer, can be best 
served and honored by the service and honor of those amongst 
men who most need it, whether by their characters or their 
suffering condition. " He that receiveth you receiveth Me." 
"Inasmuch as ye have done it unto them, ye have 
done it unto Me." " Ye visited Me." The Church— the 
Christian community — is " His body." None of these expres- 
sions have been permanently divorced from their high moral 
signification. No controversy concerning the mode of His 
presence in holy thoughts, or heroic lives, or afflicted sufferers, 
has rent the Church asunder. Stories more or less authentic, 
legends more or less touching, have represented these spiritual 
manifestations of the departed Founder in vivid forms to men. 
We have the well-known incident of the apparition of the 
Crucified to St. Francis on the heights of Laverna, which 
issued in the belief of the sacred wounds as received in his 
own person. We have the story of Benvenuto Cellini, who, 
meditating suicide in his dungeon, was deterred by a vision of 
the like appearance, from which he is said on waking to have 
carved the exquisite ivory crucifix subsequently transported 
on the shoulders of men from Barcelona to the Escurial, 
where it is now exposed to view in the great ceremonials 
of the Spanish Court. We have the conversion of the gay 
Presbyterian soldier, Colonel Gardiner, from a life of sin to 
a life of unblemished piety by the midnight apparition of the 
Cross and the gracious words, " I have done so much for thee, 
and wilt thou do nothing for Me ?" Or again, in connection 
with the other train of passages above cited, there is the 
beggar who received the divided cloak from St. Martin, and 



TEE REAL PRESENCE. - 73 

whom the saint saw in the visions of the night as the 
Redeemer showing it with gratitude to the angelic hosts. 
There is the leper who, when tended by St. Elizabeth of 
Hungary, and placed in her bed, appeared to be the Man of 
Sorrows, represented in the Vulgate rendering of the 53d 
chapter of Isaiah as a leper, " smitten of God and afflicted." 
There is the general Protestant sentiment as expressed in the 
beautiful poem of the Moravian Montgomery : 

A poor wayfaring man of grief 
Hath often passed me on my way : 
I did not pause to ask His name- 
Whither He went, or whence He came— 
Yet there was something in His eye 
That won my love, I know not why. 

But these stories, these legends, one and all, either con- 
fessedly exhibit the effect produced on the inward, not the 
outward, sense; or, even if some should contend for their 
actual external reality, they are acknowledged to be rare, 
exceptional, transitory phenomena, arising out of and repre- 
senting the inner spiritual truth which is above and beyond 
them. 

How is it then, we may ask, that the Presence in the Sac- 
rament of the Lord's Supper has ever been regarded in any 
other light ? How is it that the expressions in the New Testa- 
ment which bear on this subject have been interpreted in 
a different manner from the precisely similar expressions of 
which we have just spoken ? 

These expressions, one would suppose, had been sufficiently 
guarded in the original context. In the very discourse in 
which Jesus Christ is represented as first using the terms 
which he afterwards represented in the outward forms of the 
parting meal, — speaking of moral converse with Himself under 
the strong figure of " eating His flesh and drinking His blood," 
— it is not only obvious to every reader that the literal sense 
was absolutely impossible, but He himself concluded the whole 
argument by the words which ought to have precluded for- 
ever all question on the subject: "The flesh profiteth nothing; 
it is the spirit that quicken eth." 

This assertion of the moral and spiritual character of the 
Presence of Christ in the Sacrament, as everywhere else, has, 
as we shall see, never been wholly obliterated. The words of 
4 



74 CHRISTIAN INSTITUTIONS. 

Ignatius, " Faith is the body of Christ," and " Charity is the 
blood of Christ;" the words of Augustine, "Crede et mandu- 
casti," have ever found an echo in the higher and deeper 
intelligence of Christendom. But not the less, almost from the 
earliest times, and in almost every Church, a countercurrent of 
thought has prevailed, which has endeavored to confine the 
Redeemer's Presence to the material elements of the sacred 
ordinance. "We discover the first traces of it, although vaguely 
and indefinitely, in the prayer mentioned by Justin Martyr, 
and more or less transmitted through the ancient liturgies, 
that the bread and wine " may become the Body and Blood." 
We trace it in the peculiar ceremonial sanctity with which not 
only the ordinance but the elements came to be invested, dur- 
ing the first five centuries. We see it in the scruple which 
has descended even to our own time, which insists on fasting 
as a necessary condition of the reception* of the Communion, 
in flagrant defiance of the well-known circumstances not only 
of its original institution, but of all the details of its celebration 
during the whole of the Apostolic age. We see it again in 
the practice (which began at least as early as Infant Baptism, 
and which is still continued in the Eastern Church) of giving 
the Communion to unconscious infants. We see it finally in 
the innumerable regulations with which the rite is fenced 
about in the Roman Catholic, the Greek, and some of the 
Presbyterian Churches, as well as in the theories which have 
been drawn up to explain or to enforce the doctrine, and of 
which we will presently speak more at length. 

But in order to do this effectually, we must recur to the 
question suggested above : " Why is it that the spiritual and 
obvious explanation, accepted almost without murmur or ex- 
ception for all other passages where the Divine Presence is 

* Perhaps, as this scruple in early times extended to both sacraments, it had 
not then, in regard to the Eucharist, assumed the gross corporeal form which 
it represents in later times. But it may be worth while to give as an instance, 
both of the force with which it was held, and the utter recklessness of the ex- 
ample and teaching of Christ Himself with which it was accompanied, the 
following passage from even so eminent a man as Chrysostom: "They say I 
have given the Communion to some after they had eaten; but if I did this let 
my name be blotted out of the book of Bishops, and not written in the book of 
orthodox faith. Lo ! if I did anything of the sort, Christ will cast me out of 
His kingdom; but if they persist in urging this, and are contentious, let them 
also pass sentence against the Lord Himself, who gave the Communion to the 
Apostles after supper." (Ep. 128.)— The Life and Times of St. Chrysostom, 
by the Rev. W. Stephens. 



THE REAL PRESENCE. 75 

indicated, should -have ever been rejected in the case of the 
Eucharist, which, in its first institution, had for its evident ob- 
ject the expression of that identical thought?" 

It was a wise saying of Coleridge, " Presume yourself igno- 
rant of a writer's understanding, until you understand his 
ignorance ;" and so in regard to doctrines or ceremonies, how- 
ever extravagant they may seem to us, it is almost useless to 
discuss them unless we endeavor to see how they have origi- 
nated. 

I. First, then, it may be said that the material interpretation 
of this ordinance arose from a defect in the intellectual condi- 
tion of the early recipients of Christianity, reaching 
back to its very beginning. The parabolical and parabolical 
figurative language of the Gospel teaching was lan £ ua s e - 
chosen designedly. There were many reasons for its adoption, 
some accidental, some permanent. It was the language of the 
East, and therefore the almost necessary vehicle of thought for 
One who spoke as an Oriental to Orientals. It was the lan- 
guage best suited, then as always, to the rude, childlike minds 
to whom the Gospel discourses were addressed. It was the 
language in which profound doctrines were most likely to 
be preserved for future ages, distinct from the dogmatic 
or philosophical turns of speech, which, whilst aiming at 
forms which shall endure for eternity, are often the most 
transitory of all, often far more transitory than the hum- 
blest tale or the simplest figure of speech. It was the 
sanction, for all time, of the use of fiction and poetry as a 
means of conveying moral and religious truth. In the Para- 
bles of the Prodigal Son and of the Rich Man and Lazarus, 
are wrapt up by anticipation the drama and romance of mod- 
ern Europe. But with these immense and preponderating 
advantages of the parabolic style of instruction was combined 
one inevitable danger and drawback. Great, exalted, general 
as is the poetic instinct of mankind, it yet is not universal or 
in all cases supreme. There is a prosaic element in the human 
mind which turns into matter of fact even the highest flights 
of genius and the purest aspirations of devotion. And, strange 
to say, this prosaic turn is sometimes found side by side with 
the development of the parabolic tendency of which we have 
been speaking ; some+imes even in the same mind. Nothing 



76 CHRISTIAN INSTITUTIONS. 

can be more figurative and poetic than Bunyan's " Pilgrim ;" 
nothing more homely and pedantic than his " Grace Abound- 
ing." This union of the two tendencies is nowhere more 
striking than in the East, and in the first age of Christianity. 
It appeared in the Gospel narrative itself. Appropriate, ele- 
vating, unmistakable as were our Lord's figures, they were 
again and again brought down by his hearers to the most vul- 
gar and commonplace meaning. The reply of the Samaritan 
woman at the well — the comment of the Apostles on the 
leaven of the Pharisees — the gross materialism of the people 
of Capernaum in regard to the very expressions which have in 
part been pressed into modern Eucharistic controversies, are 
well-known cases in point. The Talmud is one vast system of 
turning figures into facts. The passionate exclamation of the 
Psalmist, " Thou hast saved me from among the horns of the 
unicorns," has been turned by the Rabbis into an elaborate 
chronicle of adventures. "Imagination and defect of imagina- 
tion have each contributed to the result." * The whole his- 
tory of early Millenarianism implies the same incapacity for 
distinguishing between poetry and prose. The strange tradi- 
tion of our Lord's words which Irenaeus quoted from Papias, 
and which Papias quoted from the Apostles, in the full belief 
that they were genuine, is a sample of some such misunder- 
stood metaphor : f " The days shall come when each vine will 
grow with ten thousand boughs, each bough with ten thou- 
sand branches, each branch with ten thousand twigs, each twig 
with ten thousand bunches, each bunch with ten thousand 
grapes, each grape shall yield twenty-five measures of wine." 
A statement like this provokes only a smile, because it never 
struck root in the Church ; but it is not in itself more extrav- 
agant than the Sacramental theories built on figures not less 
evidently poetic. 

II. A second cause of the persistency of this physical lim- 
itation of the Sacramental doctrine lay in the fascination 
Prevalence exercised over the early centuries of our era by the 
of magic. belief in amulets and charms which the Christians 
inherited, and could not but inherit, from the decaying 



* Gould's Legends of the Old Testament, p. vi. 

+ A striking explanation is given of this in Philochristus. 



THE REAL PRESENCE. 77 

Roman Empire. In a striking passage in Cardinal Newman's 
" Essay on Development," written with the view of identify- 
ing the modern Church of Rome with the Church of the early 
ages, he shows, with all the power of his eloquence, and with 
a remarkable display of historical ingenuity, the apparent 
affinity between the magical rites which flooded Roman society 
during the three first centuries, and what seemed to be 'their 
counterparts in the contemporary Christian Church. Doubt- 
less much of this similarity was accidental ; much also was due 
to the vague terror inspired by a new and powerful religion. 
But much also was well grounded in the likeness which the 
aspect of early Christianity inevitably bore to the influences by 
which it was surrounded. It was not mere hostility, nor mere 
ignorance, which saw in the exorcisms, the purifications, the 
mysteries of the Church of the first ages, the effects of the 
same vast wave of superstition which elsewhere produced the 
witches and soothsayers of Italy, the Mithraic rites of Persia, 
the strange charms and invocations of the Gnostics. In these 
likenesses it is a strange inversion, instead of recognizing the 
influence of the perishing Empire on the rising Church, not 
only to insist on binding down the Church to the effete super- 
stitions of the Empire, but to regard those superstitions as 
themselves the marks of a divine Catholicity. 

Another theologian, with a far truer historical insight, in 
noticing the like correspondence of the anarchical tendencies 
of that period with the regenerating elements of Christianity, 
has taken a juster view of their relation to each other. Whilst 
fully acknowledging that the Christian movement to the ex- 
ternal observer appeared to embrace them both, he has endeav- 
ored not to confound the lower human accretions with Chris- 
tianity itself, but to distinguish between them. " Christianity," 
says Dr. Arnold, " shared the common lot of all great moral 
changes ; perfect as it was in itself, its nominal adherents were 
often neither wise nor good. The seemingly incongruous 
evils of the thoroughly corrupt society of the Roman Empire, 
superstition and scepticism, ferocity and sensual profligacy, 
often sheltered themselves under the name of Christianity; 
and hence the heresies of the first age of the Christian 
Church." * 

* Fragment on the Church, pp. 85, 86. 



78 CHRISTIAN INSTITUTIONS. 

The " sensual profligacy " and the " scepticism " no doubt 
remained amongst "the heresies;" but the "ferocity " and the 
" superstition " unfortunately lingered in the Church itself. 
The " ferocity " developed itself somewhat later in the hordes 
of monks that turned the council-hall at Ephesus into a den of 
thieves, and stained the streets of Alexandria with the blood 
of Hypatia. The " superstition " clove to the Sacramental 
ordinances, and too often converted the emblems of life and 
light into signs of what most Christians now would regard as 
mere remnants of sortilege and sorcery. The stories of Sacra- 
mental bread carried about as a protection against sickness 
and storm can deserve no other name ; and it was not without 
reason that in later times the sacred words of consecration, 
which often degenerated into a mere incantation, became the 
equivalent for a conjurer's trick. And to this was added a 
peculiar growth of the third and fourth centuries of the Chris- 
tian era, which was gradually consolidated amidst the length- 
ening shadows of the falling Empire, — the sacerdotal claims 
of the Christian clergy. In themselves these clerical preten- 
sions had no necessary connection with the material view of 
the Sacramental rites. The administration of Baptism is not 
regarded even by Roman Catholics as an exclusive privilege of 
the clergy. In early times, indeed, it was practically confined 
to the bishops, but this was soon broken through, and in later 
ages it has in the Roman Church been viewed as the right, 
and even in some cases as the duty, of the humblest layman or 
laywoman. But the celebration of the Eucharist, although 
there is nothing in the terms of its original institution to dis- 
tinguish it in this respect from the other sacrament, has yet 
been regarded as a peculiar function of the priesthood. In the 
second century, like that other sacrament, its administration 
depended on the permission of the bishops, yet when emanci- 
pated from their control, unlike Baptism, it did not descend 
beyond the order of presbyters, and has ever since been bound 
up with their dignity and power. Even here there can be 
found in the Roman Catholic Church those who maintain that 
there is no essential and necessary connection between their 
office and the validity of the Sacrament. But this has not 
been the general view; and it is impossible not to suppose that 
the belief in the preternatural powers of the priesthood, and 



THE REAL PRESENCE. 79 

the belief in the material efficacy of the sacramental elements, 
have acted and reacted upon each other, culminating in the ex- 
traordinary hyperbole which regards the priest as the maker of 
his Creator, and varying with the importance which has been 
ascribed to the second order of the Christian clergy, and 
through them to the hierarchy generally. 

III. These two tendencies — the early tendency to mistake 
parable for prose, and the early superstitious regard for exter- 
nal objects — are sufficient to account for the lower forms of 
the irrational theories respecting the Sacrament of The spirit- 
the Eucharist. But there is a third cause of a uaiview. 
nobler kind which will lead us gradually and naturally to the 
consideration of the other side of the question. It is one of 
the peculiarities of this Sacrament that partly through its long 
history, partly from the original grandeur of its first concep- 
tion, it suggests a great variety of thoughts which cling to it 
with such tenacity as almost to become part of itself. To dis- 
entangle these from the actual forms which they encompass — 
to draw precisely the limits where the outward ends and the 
inward begins, where the transitory melts into the eternal and 
the earthly into the heavenly — is beyond the power of many, 
beside the wish of most. An example may be taken from 
another great ordinance which belongs to the world no less 
than to the Church, and which by more than half Christendom 
is regarded as a sacrament — Marriage. How difficult it would 
be to analyze the ordinary mode of feeling regarding the cere- 
mony which unites two human beings in the most sacred rela- 
tions of life ; how many trains of association from Jewish 
patriarchal traditions, from the usages of Imperial Rome, from 
the metaphors of Apostolic teaching, from the purity of Teu- 
tonic and of English homes, have gone to make up the joint 
sanctity of that solemn moment, in which the reality and the 
form are by the laws of God and man blended in indissoluble 
union. Even if there are mingled with it customs which had 
once a baser significance ; yet still even these are invested by 
the feeling of the moment with a meaning above themselves, 
which envelops the whole ceremonial with an atmosphere of 
grandeur that no inferior associations can dispel or degrade. 
Something analogous is the mixture of ideas which has sprung 
up round the Eucharist. It has, by the very nature of the 



80 CHRISTIAN INSTITUTIONS. 

case, two sides : its visible material aspect, of a ceremony, of 
a test, of a mystic chain by which the priest brings the 
Creator down to earth, and attaches his followers to himself 
and his order ; and its noble spiritual aspect of a sacred mem- 
ory, of a joyous thanksgiving, of a solemn self -dedication, of 
an upward aspiration towards the Divine and the Unseen. 

We have already spoken of the legends which have repre- 
sented in an outward form the spiritual presence of the Founder 
in the world at large. We have also spoken of those which 
have represented the same idea in connection with the suf- 
ferers or the heroes of humanity. There are also legends on 
which we may for a moment dwell as representing in a vivid 
form both the baser and the loftier view of the same idea in 
th Eucharist. The lowest and most material conception of 
this Presence is brought before us in the legend of the miracle 
of Bolsena, immortalized by the fresco of Raphael, in which 
the incredulous priest was persuaded by the falling of drops of 
blood from the consecrated wafer at the altar of that ancient 
Etruscan city. Such stories of bleeding wafers were not 
unfrequent in the Middle Ages, and it is not impossible that 
they originated in the curious natural phenomenon which was 
described in connection with the appearance of the cholera in 
Berlin — the discoloration produced by the appearance of cer- 
tain small scarlet insects which left on the bread which they 
touched the appearance of drops of blood. Some such ap- 
pearance, real or supposed, suggested, probably, the material 
transformation of the elements into the flesh and blood of the 
outward frame of the Founder. This is the foundation of the 
great festival of Corpus Christi, which from the thirteenth 
century has in the Latin Church commemorated the miracle of 
Bolsena, and with it the doctrine supposed to be indicated 
therein. Another class of legend rises somewhat higher. It 
is that of a radiant child appearing on the altar, such as is 
described in the lives of Edward the Confessor, and engraved 
on the screen which incloses his shrine in Westminster 
Abbey. Leofric, Earl of Mercia, with his famous Countess 
Godiva, was believed to have been present with the King, and 
to have seen it also. This apparition, " pure and bright as a 
spirit," is evidently something more refined than the indenti- 
fication of the wafer and wine with the mere flesh and blood 



THE RETL PRESENCE. 81 

of the human body of a full grown-man, and, if both stories 
were taken literally, each would be inconsistent with the other. 
A third incident of the kind leads us higher yet, and is the 
more remarkable from its indicating the doctrine of a Eucha- 
ristic Presence in a Church which most English High Church- 
men despise as altogether outside the pale of Sacramental 
graces. It has been told in various places ; amongst others, in 
the twenty-first edition * of the interesting reminiscences of 
Scottish Character, by the venerable Dean Ramsay, how a 
half-witted boy in Forfarshire after long entreaties persuaded 
the minister to give him what he called his Father's bread, and 
returned home, exclaiming, " Oh, I have seen the pretty man !" 
and died that night in excess of rapture. No savor or tradi- 
tion of Transubstantiation had invaded the brain of this poor 
child. No Presbyterian would admit the external reality of the 
vision. No Catholic or High Episcopalian would acknowledge 
the reality of that Presbyterian Sacrament. But, nevertheless, 
the purely Protestant idea of a spirtual communion had such 
an effect as to produce an impression analogous, however 
superior, to the visions of the Priest of Bolsena or the Saxon 
King. No serious confusion can arise so long as we hold to 
the obvious truth that outward appearances can never be more 
than signs of spiritual and moral excellence ; and that even 
were the Saviour Himself present in visible form before us, 
that visible presence would be useless to us, except as a token 
of the Divine Spirit within, and would have no effect on the 
human soul unless the soul consciously received a moral im- 
pulse from it. 

Such are the various elements which have gone to make up 
the sentiment of Christendom on a subject in itself so simple, 
but complicated by the confluence of the heterogeneous streams 
of irrelevant argument, misapplied metaphor, and genuine 
devotion. How its more material aspect deepened as time 
rolled on, we have already indicated. The long mediaeval con- 
troversy was at last closed by the definition of Transubstantia- 
tion in the fourth Council of Lateran, and this was followed by 
the stories already cited of the miracle of Bolsena, and other 
like incidents, which finally produced what may be called the 

* Vol. i. 239. 

4* 



82 OBMSTIAN INSTITUTIONS. 

popular belief of the Roman Church, that the bread and wine 
are, after consecration, neither more nor less than the body 
and blood that was crucified on Calvary. 

But it is interesting, and for our present purpose instructive, 
to observe how behind this popular belief, and even in some 
of the forms which most directly arose out of it, there was yet 
a constant turning to the higher and more spiritual view. Not 
only had Berengar and Abelard protested against the grosser 
conceptions, not only had the mighty Hildebrand vacillated in 
his orthodoxy, but the very statement of " Transubstantiation," 
properly understood, contained a safety-valve, through which 
the more earthly and dogmatic expressions of the doctrine 
evaporate and melt into something not very unlike the purest 
Protestantism. The word is based, as its component parts 
sufficiently indicate, on the scholastic distinction between 
"Substance" and "Accidents," a distinction which has long 
since vanished out of every sound system either of physics or 
metaphysics,* but which at the time must have been like a 
Deus ex machind to relieve the difficulties of theologians strug- 
gling to maintain their conscience and sense of truth against the 
prevailing superstitions of the age. Every external object was 
then believed to consist of two parts — the accidents, which 
represented the solid visible framework, alone cognizable by 
the senses, and the substance, which was the inward essence 
or Platonic idea, invisible to mortal eye, incommunicable to 
mortal touch. The popular notion of the Roman Catholic 
doctrine is, no doubt, that the change believed to be effected 
in the Eucharist is not of "the substance," but of "the acci- 
dents." This would seem (on the whole) the view of Aquinas, 
who maintains, not, indeed, that the accidents of the bread and 
wine are changed, but that the substance is changed, not merely 
into the substance, but into the accidents of the body and 
blood, f This is clear not only from the legends of the bleed- 
ing wafers and the like, but from the common language used 

* The connection of these materialist views of the Sacrament with the 
scholastic distinction between "substance" and "accidents" has been well 
pointed out by two distinguished scholars, who, whenever they apply them- 
selves to theological subjects, speak with a lucidity and an authority which 
need no addition.— Bishop Thirlwall in his Charge of 1854 (Remains, i. 238-46, 
249-51), and Dean Liddellin his sermon entitled "There am I in the midst." 

t Lib. iv. Sent. Dist. viii. qu. 2; quoted in Bishop Thirlwall's Charge of 1854. 
(Remains, i. 250.) 



THE REAL PRESENCE. 83 

as to the portentous miracle by which the visible earthly ele- 
ments are supposed to be transformed into something invisible 
and celestial. But the true scholastic doctrine is wholly incon- 
sistent with any such supposition. The " substance " spoken 
of is not the material substance, but the impalpable idea. The 
miracle, if it can be so called in any sense of that much-vexed 
word, consists in the transformation of one invisible object 
into another invisible object. The senses have no part or lot 
in the transaction, on one side or the other. Even the "sub- 
stance " * into which the ideal essence of the bread and wine is 
transformed is not the gross corporeal matter of the bones and 
sinews and fluid of the human frame, but the ideal essence of 
that frame. It is, probably, not without design that Cardinal 
Newman, in speaking of the word " substance," lays down so 
anxiously and precisely that "the greatest philosophers know 
nothing at all about it." The doctrine, thus conceived and 
thus stated in one of the decrees of Trent, is, as the Bishop of 
St. David's \ well expresses it, the assertion that "one meta- 
physical entity is substituted for another, equally beyond the 
grasp of the human mind, and equally incapable of any predi- 
cate by which it may become the subject of an intelligible 
proposition." It is evident that under cover of a word which 
either means nothing or something which no one can under- 
stand, the whole idealistic philosophy, the whole rationalistic 
theology, the whole Biblicaland spiritual conceptions of the 
Eucharist, might steal in. 

It is difficult, but it is instructive, to track out the course of 
this Protean logomachy. The confusion pervades not only the 
words of the doctrine, but the forms which have gathered 
round it. Whilst some of these forms have intensified the 
gross popular belief, and are only explicable on the supposition 
of its truth, — such as the minute precautions concerning the 
mode of disposing of the sacred elements, or of guarding them 
against the trivial incidents of every-day occurrence, — on the 
other hand, some of them are only defensible on the hypothesis 



* The ambiguity which in the Roman statement attaches to the word " sub- 
stance," in the Anglican statement attaches no less to the word "real.' 
" Nothing in this question can depend on the expression Real Presence; 
everything on the sense which is attached to it."— Bishop Thirl wall's Charge, 
1854. (Remains, i. 240.) 

+ Charge. ia54. (Remains, i. 250.) 



84 CHRISTIAN INSTITUTIONS. 

of the more spiritual view to which we have just adverted. 
This is even more apparent in the mediaeval and Western than 
in the Patristic and Oriental Church. We have seen that 
in the earlier ages it was the custom, as it still is in Eastern 
worship, to give the Communion to infants. This custom 
si^ce the thirteenth century has in the Latin Church been 
entirely proscribed. Partly, no doubt, this may have arisen 
from the fear — increasing with the increase of the superstitious 
veneration for the actual elements — lest the wine, or as it was 
deemed the sacred blood, should be spilt in the process; but 
partly also it arose from the repugnance which the more rest- 
less, rational, and reforming West felt against an infant's 
unconscious participation in a rite which, according to any 
reasonable explanation of its import, could not be considered 
as useful to any except conscious and intelligent agents. In 
many of its aspects, no doubt, the same might be said of 
Baptism. But there it was at least possible to regard the rite 
in relation to children as equivalent to an enrolment in a new 
society — a dedication to a merciful Saviour — a hope that they 
would lead the rest of their lives according to this beginning. 
Not so the Eucharist. The Eucharist is either a purely moral 
act, or else it is entirely mechanical. If viewed as a charm, as a 
medicine, it would be equally applicable to conscious or un- 
conscious persons, to children or to full-grown men. But if 
viewed as an act of the will, Infant Communion became an 
obvious incongruity, and accordingly, in spite of the long and 
venerable traditions which sustained the usage, it was deliber- 
ately abandoned by the Latin Church; and we may be sure 
that the enlightened sense of Christian Europe will forever 
prevent its rehabilitation. The rejection of Infant Commu- 
nion is intelligible on the principle that the efficacy of the 
Eucharist is a moral influence — it is totally indefensible on 
the principle whether of Roman or Anglican divines, who 
maintain its efficacy, irrespectively of any spiritual thought or 
reflection in the recipient. Another change of the same kind 
in Western Christendom is equally open to this construction. 
One of the most common charges of Protestants against the 
Church of Rome is its withholding of the cup from the laity. 
The expression is not quite accurate. The cup is not abso- 
lutely withheld from laymen, inasmuch as it was the privilege 



THE REAL PRESENCE. 85 

of the Kings of France, and also is still given in cases of ill- 
ness ; and its retention is not from the laity as such, but from 
all, whether priests or laymen, that are not actually officiating. 
This, properly understood, places the custom on what is no 
doubt its true basis. It began probably, like the denial of the 
Communion to infants, from an apprehension lest the chalice 
should be spilt in going to and fro, or lest the sacred liquid 
should adhere to the beards or moustaches of the bristling 
warriors of the Middle Ages. But it was justified on a ground 
which is fatal to the localization of the Divine Presence in the 
earthly elements. It was maintained that the communicant 
received the benefits of the sacrament as completely if he par- 
took of one of the two species as if he partook of both. This 
was at once to assert that the efficacy of the sacrament did not 
depend on the material elements. It was the same revolution 
with respect to the Eucharist that the almost contemporary 
substitution of sprinkling for immersion was in Baptism. 
Such a change in the matter of either sacrament can only be 
justified on the principle that the matter is but of small impor- 
tance — that the main stress must be on the spirit. And when 
to this alteration of form was yet further added, in explanation 
of it, a distinct scholastic theory that each of the two species 
contained the substance of both, the doctrine of the supreme 
indifference of form was consolidated, so far as the metaphys- 
ical subtleties and barbarous philosophy of that age would 
allow, into a separate dogma. 

If the fine lines of Thomas Aquinas in his famous hymn, 
" Lauda Sion Salvatorem," have any sense at all, they mean 
that the body of Christ is not contained in the bread, nor the 
blood in the wine, but that something different from each is 
contained in both; and what that something is must either be 
a purely spiritual Presence in the hearts of the faithful or else 
the presence of two physical bodies existing on every altar at 
the same moment, which is maintained by no one. 

When the Bohemian Utraquists fought with desperate energy 
to recover the use of the cup, they were in one sense doubtless 
fighting the cause of the laity against the clergy, of old Cath- 
olic latitude against modern Roman restrictions. But with 
that obliquity of purpose which sometimes characterizes the 
fiercest ecclesiastical struggles, the Roman Church, on the 



£6 CHRISTIAN INSTITUTIONS. 

other hand, was fighting the battle of an enlarged and liberal 
view of the Sacraments against a fanatical insistence on the 
necessity of a detailed conformity to ancient usage. 

Of a piece with these indications of a more reasonable view 
is the constant under-song of better spirits from the earliest 
times, which maintains with regard to both Sacraments, not 
only that, in extreme cases, they may be dispensed with, but 
that their essence is to be had without the form at all. The 
bold doctrine of Wall — the great Anglican authority of Infant 
Baptism — that Quakers may be regarded as baptized, because 
they have the substance of that of which baptism is the sign, 
is justified by the maxim of the early Church that the martyr- 
dom of the unbaptized is itself a baptism. And in like man- 
ner, the most Protestant of all the statements on this subject 
in the English Prayer Book is itself taken from an earlier 
rubric to the same effect in the mediaeval Church : " If a man 
.... by any just impediment do not receive the Sacrament 
of Christ's body and blood, the Church shall instruct him that " 
[if he fulfil the moral conditions of Communion], " he doth 
eat and drink the Body and Blood of our Saviour Christ to his 
soul's health, although he do not receive the Sacrament with his 
mouth." This principle is asserted in the Sarum Manual, 
which less distinctly, but not less positively, allowed of the 
possibility of spiritual communion when actual reception of the 
elements was impossible. * 

Such a concession is in fact the concession of the whole 
principle. In the more stringent view, the outward reception 
of the two Sacraments was regarded as so absolutely necessary 
to salvation, that not even the innocence of the new-born babe 
nor the blameless life of Marcus Aurelius were allowed to 
plead against their lack of the outward form of one or the 
other. But the moment that the door is opened for the moral 
consideration of what is due to mercy and humanity, the whole 
fabric of the strict Sacramental system vanishes, and reason, 
justice, and charity step in to take their rightful places. 

IV. We have thus far endeavored to show how in the vitals 
of the most mechanical theory of the Sacraments there was 
wrapt up a protest in favor of the most spiritual view. Let 

* Blunt's Annotated Prayer Booh, p. 291. 



THE REAL PRESENCE. 87 

us for a moment take the reverse side of the picture, and show 
how, in the heart of the early Protestant Church, there has 
always been wrapt up a lurking tenderness for the purely out- 
ward and material view. 

When the shock of the Reformation came, next after the 
Pope's Supremacy and the doctrine of Justification by Faith — 
and in a certain sense more fiercely even than either of these, 
because it concerned a tangible and visible object — the battle 
of the Churches was fought over the Sacrament of the Altar. 

Each of the Reformers on the Continent made some for- 
midable inroad into the usages or the theories which the Ro- 
man Church had built up on the primitive ordinance. Yet they 
all retained something of the old scholastic theory, or the old 
material sentiment on the external surroundings of the grand 
spiritual conception of the Sacrament. The scholastic con- 
fusion between substance and accident continued 
in full force. Luther, in most points the boldest, 
the most spiritual of all, on this point was the most hesitating 
and the most superstitious. Under the new name of " Con- 
substantiation," the ancient dogma of " Transubstantiation " 
received a fresh lease of life. The unchanged form of the 
Lutheran altar, with crucifix, candles, and wafer, testified to 
the comparatively unchanged doctrine of the Lutheran sacra- 
ment. Melanchthon, Bucer, Calvin, all trembled on the same 
inclined slope ; all labored to retain some mixture of the phys- 
ical with the purer idea of the metaphysical, moral efficacy 
of the Eucharistic rite. One only, the Reformer of Zurich, 
" the clear-headed and intrepid Zwingli," * in treat- Zwin 
ing of this subject, anticipated the necessary con- 
clusion of the whole matter. But his doctrine prevailed in 
England and on the Continent wherever his influence ex- 
tended, and in the Roman Church has not been altogether 
inoperative. In language, perhaps too austerely exact, but 
transparently clear, he recognized the full Biblical truth, that 
the operations of the Divine Spirit on the soul can only be 
through moral means; and that the moral influence of the 
Sacrament is chiefly or solely through the potency of its 
unique commemoration of the most touching and transcendent 

* See the excellent account of Zwingli, Bampton Lectures on the Com- 
munion of Saints, by the Rev. H. B. Wilson, p. 135. 



88 CHRISTIAN INSTITUTIONS. 

event in history. This is the view, sometimes in contempt 
called Zwinglian, which in substance became the doctrine of 
all the " Reformed Churches " * properly so called, and in a 
more or less degree of all Protestant Churches. It is well 
known how vehemently Luther struggled against it. In the 
princely hall of the old castle which crowns the romantic town 
of Marburg took place the stormy discussion in which Luther 
and Zwingli, in the presence of the Landgrave of Hesse, for 
two long days met face to face, in the vain hope of convincing 
one another, with the hope, not equally vain, of at least part- 
ing in friendship. Everything which could be said on behalf 
of the dogmatic, coarse, literal interpretation of the institu- 
tion was urged with the utmost vigor of word and gesture by 
the stubborn Saxon. Everything which could be said on 
behalf of the rational, refined, spiritual construction was urged 
with a union of the utmost acuteness and gentleness by the 
sober-minded Swiss. Never before or since have the two 
views been brought into such close collision. 

V. We now turn to the relation of the two conflicting ten- 
English dencies in England. It will not be surprising to 
Church. an y one w h h as followed the essentially mixed 
aspect of the English character and of English institutions, the 
gradual development of our religious, side by side with the 
equally gradual development of our political, ordinances and 
ideas — that the conflict of thought, visible as we have seen 
even in the compact fabric both of the Roman and the Pres- 
byterian Churches, should have left yet deeper traces in the 
Church of England. During the reign of Henry VIII. this 
hesitation was almost a necessary consequence of the labori- 
ous efforts by which King and people rose out of their own 
natural prepossessions into a higher region : 

Now half appeared 
The tawny lion, pawing to get free 
His hinder parts, then springs as broke from bonds, 
And rampant shakes his brinded mane. 

No doubt the ancient doctrine maintained its place during 
those eventful years. But Tyndale had not spoken and written 
in vain ; and already by the Royal theologian himself was is- 

* I.e., the Swiss, South German, French, and English Churches. 



THE REAL PRESENCE. 89 

sued one of those statesmanlike documents in which the true 
doctrine of the relation of form to spirit is set forth with a 
clearness of exposition and of thought that has never been sur- 
passed.* The contradictions and vacillations in the growth 
of Cranmer's opinions on this point are well know. Nothing 
can be more natural — nothing, we may add, more creditable 
to his honesty and discrimination — than that he should have 
felt his way gradually and carefully though the labyrinth 
from which he had been slowly emerging. In Edward VI.'s 
reign, the influence of the Reformer of Zurich at last made 
itself felt in every corner of the ecclesiastical movement of 
England;f "De'coena omnes Angli recte sentiunt," writes 
Hooper to his Swiss friends in 1549 ; " Satisfecit piis Eduardi 
reformatio," writes Bullinger. At length Cranmer's agree- 
ment with the Helvetic Confession of 1536 was complete. 
" Canterbury," writes a friend to Bullinger in 1548, " contrary 
to expectation, maintained your opinion. It is all over with 
the Lutherans." Ridley's last sentiments, though guardedly 
expressed, were at the core the same as Cranmer's. It was its 
persistent adhesion to the Swiss doctrine on the whole which 
made the Anglican Church, in spite of its episcopal govern- 
ment and liturgical worship, to be classed not amongst the 
Lutheran but amongst the Reformed Churches, 

Yet still the mediaeval, or, if we will, the Lutheran element 
remained too strongly fixed to be altogether dislodged. At the 
distance of two centuries, Swift could regard his own Church 
as represented by Martin rather than by Jack. Lutheranism 
was, in fact, the exact shade which colored the mind of Eliz- 
abeth, and of the divines who held to her. Her altar was 
precisely the Lutheran altar; her opinions were represented 
in almost a continuous line by one divine after another down 
to our own time. But they were always kept in check by the 
strong Zwinglian atmosphere which pervaded the original the- 
ology of the English Church, and which has been its prevail- 
ing hue ever since. Into this more reasonable theology almost 
every expression that has been since used (till quite our 
modern times) might be resolved. But in the earlier years 



* Froude's History, iii. 367. 

t See Cardwell's Two Liturgies, Pref. pp. 26-28. 



90 CHRISTIAN INSTITUTIONS. 

of the reign of Elizabeth, not only the Queen herself, but a 
very large portion of the English clergy, who had been brought 
up in the Roman doctrine, still held opinions scarcely dis- 
tinguishable from it. Thus it came to pass that, in the spirit 
of compromise and conciliation which pervaded all their work, 
the framers of the formularies, though determined to keep the 
Zwinglian doctrine intact, yet often so expressed it as to make 
it look as much like Lutheranism as possible. Elizabeth her- 
self, when cross-questioned in her sister's time, evaded the 
doctrine rather than stated it distinctly. There are still to be 
seen rudely carved on a stone under the pulpit of the Church 
of Walton on Thames the lines in which she gave the answer 
that to many a devout spirit in the English Church has seemed 
a sufficient reply to all questionings on the subject : 

Christ was the Word and spake it, 
He took the bread and brake it ; 
And what the Word doth make it 
That I believe and take it. 

The Articles as finally drawn up in her reign exhibit this same 
reluctance to exclude positively one or other of the two views. 
The 28th Article, as originally written in Edward VI.'s time, 
had expressed the exact Helvetic doctrine. A sentence was 
added in which, amidst a crowd of Zwinglian expressions, one 
word — " given " — was inserted which, though not necessarily 
Lutheran or Roman, certainly lent itself to that meaning. 
The 29th Article, on "the wicked which eat not the Body of 
Christ in the use of the Lord's Supper," which was added in 
Elizabeth's time, was obviously meant to condemn the doctrine 
that there is any reception possible but a moral reception. 
But — not to speak of the slight wavering, at its close, of the 
positiveness of its opening — this very Article, though author- 
ized by the canons of 1603, and by implication in the Caroline 
Act of Uniformity in 1662, does not occur in the edition of 
the Articles (which are here only 33 in number) authorized by 
the 13th of Elizabeth. That is to say, this most Protestant 
of all the Articles is confirmed by what many regard as the 
authority of the Church in convocation, and by the legislature 
of Charles II.'s time, but it was not confirmed by the Act 
which first imposed the Articles, and which had for its object 
the admission of Presbyterian orders. 

The Catechism, which originally contained no exposition of 



THE REAL PRESENCE. 91 

the sacraments at all, in the time of James I. received a sup- 
plement, in which for one moment the highly rhetorical lan- 
guage of the Fathers and Schoolmen is strongly pressed : " The 
Body and Blood of Christ are verily and indeed taken and 
received in the Lord's Supper." But then the qualifying 
clause comes in, "by the faithful ;" and these very words are 
further restricted as describing, not the bread and wine, but the 
"thing signified thereby." The strong denial of "the Real 
and bodily, the Real and essential Presence," which was in 
Edward VI.'s time incorporated in the 28th Article, and after- 
wards appended to the Prayer Book in his Declaration of 
Kneeling, was in Elizabeth's omitted altogether, and when 
revived in Charles II.' s time was altered to meet the views 
of the then predominant High Church divines ; though the 
Declaration itself was restored at the request of the Puritan 
party. But the words "real and essential Presence there 
being" were omitted, and the words " corporal presence" sub- 
stituted for them. The consequence is, that while the adora- 
tion of the elements or of " any corporal presence of Christ's 
natural flesh and blood " is strictly forbidden as idolatrous, the 
worship of " any real and essential presence there being of 
Christ's natural flesh and blood" is by implication not con- 
demned by this Declaration of the Rubric. 

Most characteristic of all is the combination of the two 
tendencies in the words of the administration of the Eucharist. 
In the first Prayer Book of Edward VI., which retained as 
much as possible of the ancient forms both in belief and 
usage, the words were almost the same as now in the Roman 
Church, and as formerly in the Sarum Missal: "The body of 
our Lord Jesus Christ which was given for thee, preserve thy 
body and soul unto everlasting life." In the second Prayer 
Book of Edward VI, when the Swiss influence had taken 
complete possession of the English Reformers, this clause was 
dropped, and in its place was substituted the words, " Take and 
eat this in remembrance that Christ died for thee, and feed on 
Him in thy heart by faith with thanksgiving." In the Prayer 
Book of Elizabeth, and no doubt by her desire, the two clauses 
were united, and so have remained ever since. " Excellently 
well done was it," says an old Anglican divine,* " of Queen 

* L'Estrange, Alliance of Divine Offices, p. 219. 



92 CHRISTIAN INSTITUTIONS. 

Elizabeth and her Reformers, to link both together; for 
between the Body and Blood of Christ in the Eucharist, and 
the Sacramental Commemoration of His Passion, there is so 
inseparable a league as subsist they cannot, except they consist." 
" Excellently well done was it," we may add, to leave this 
standing proof, in the very heart of our most solemn service, 
that the two views which have long divided the Christian 
Church are compatible with joint Christian communion — so 
that here at least Luther and Zwingli might feel themselves at 
one; that the Puritan Edward and the Roman Mary might, 
had they lived under the Latitudinarian though Lutheran Eliza- 
beth, have thus far worshipped together. 

What has occurred in the Church of England is an example 
of what might occur and has occurred in other churches, not 
so pointedly perhaps, but not less really. 



THE BODY AND BLOOD OF CHRIST. 93 



CHAPTER VI. 

THE BODY AND BLOOD OF CHRIST. 

It may be necessary, in order to justify and explain the 
preceding chapter, to inquire into the Biblical meaning of 
the expressions "the body" and "the blood of Christ," both 
as they occur in St. John's Gospel, without express reference 
to the Eucharist, and as they occur in connection with the 
Eucharist in the three Gospels and the Epistles. 

I. The words in St. John's Gospel (vi. 53-56) are as 
follows : " Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man, and 
drink His blood, ye have no liye in you. Whoso st. John's 
eateth My flesh, and drinketh My blood, hath Gospel. 
eternal life ; and I will raise him up at the last day. For My 
flesh is meat indeed, and My blood is drink indeed. He that 
eateth My flesh, and drinketh My blood, dwelleth in Me, and 
I in him." 

It is said that a great orator once gave this advice to a 
younger speaker who asked his counsel : " You are more 
anxious about words than about ideas. Remember that if 
you are thinking of words you will have no ideas ; but if you 
have ideas, words will come of themselves." * That is true as 
regards ordinary eloquence. It is no less true in considering 
the eloquence of religion. In theology, in religious conver- 
sation, in religious ordinances, we ought as much as possible 
to try to get beneath the phrases we use, and never to rest 
satisfied with the words, however excellent, until we have 
ascertained what we mean by them. Thus alone can we 
fathom the depth of such phrases ; thus alone can we protect 
ourselves against the superstition of forms and the "idols of 
the market-place ;" thus alone can we grasp the realities of 
which words and. forms are the shadow. 

The passage under consideration in St. John's Gospel at 

* Mr. Pitt to Lord Wellesley. Reminiscences of Archdeacon Sinclair \ p. 273. 



94 CHRISTIAN INSTITUTIONS. 

once contains this principle, and also is one of the most 
striking examples of it. It is one of those startling expres- 
sions used by Christ to show us that He intends to drive 
us from the letter to the spirit, by which He shatters the crust 
and shell in order to force us to the kernel. It is as if He 
said : " It is not enough for you to see the outward face of 
the Son of man, or hear His outward words, to touch His out- 
ward vesture. That is not Himself. It is not enough that you 
walk by His side, or hear others talk of Him, or use terms of 
affection and endearment towards Him. You must go deeper 
than this: you must go to His very inmost heart, to the very 
core and marrow of His being. You must not only read and 
understand, but you must mark, learn, and inwardly digest, 
and make part of yourselves, that which alone can be part of 
the human spirit and conscience." * It expresses, with regard 
to the life and death of Jesus Christ, the same general truth 
as is expressed when St. Paul says : " Put ye on the Lord 
Jesus Christ " — that is, clothe yourselves with His spirit as with 
a garment. Or again : " Let the same mind be in you as was 
in Christ Jesus." It is the general truth which our Lord him- 
self expressed: "I am the Vine; ye are the branches." In 
all the meaning is the same ; but, inasmuch as the figure of 
speech of which we are now speaking is stronger, it also 
expresses more fully and forcibly what the others express 
generally. It is the figure not altogether strange to Western 
ears, but more familiar to the Eastern mind, in which intellectual 
and moral instruction is represented under the image of eating 
and drinking, feasting and carousing, digesting and nourishing. 
" I," says Wisdom in the book of Ecclesiasticus, — " am the 
mother of fair love, and fear, and knowledge, and holy hope : 
I therefore, being eternal, am given to all my children. Come 
unto me, all ye that be desirous of me, and fill yourselves with 
my fruits. For my memorial is sweeter than honey, and 
mine inheritance than the honeycomb. They that eat me 
shall still hunger for more; they that drink me shall still thirst 
for more." f It is no doubt to modern culture a repulsive J 

* This is well put in an early sermon of Arnold on this passage, vol. i. Ser- 
mon XXIV. 

t Ecclesiasticus xxiv. 18-21. Cf. Prov. ix. 5. See also Sayings of Jewish 
Fathers, by C. Taylor, quoted in Philochristus, p. 438. 

X See Foster's Essays, p. 279. 



THE BODY AND BLOOD OF CHRIST. 95 

metaphor, but it is the same which has entered into all 
European languages in speaking of the most refined form of 
mental appreciation — taste. If we ask how this word has thus 
come to be used, it is difficult to say. "All that we know 
about the matter is this. Man has chosen to take a metaphor 
from the body and apply it to the mind. ' Tact ' from touch 
is an analogous instance." * This general usage is sufficient to 
justify the expression without going back to the more bar- 
barous and literal practices in which, in savage tribes, the con- 
querors devour the flesh of a hostile chief in order to absorb 
his courage into themselves, or the parents feed their children 
with the flesh of strong or spirited children in order to give 
them energy. f 

II. We pass to the kindred but yet more famous words of 
the Synoptic Gospels in the account of the Last The Synop- 
Supper (Matt. xxvi. 26, 28 ; Mark xiv. 22, 24 ; Luke tic Gospels. 
xxii. 19, and with a slight variation, 22). And these same 
words, long before the composition of the earliest of the present 
Gospels, are recorded by St. Paul in his narrative of the same 
event (1 Cor. xi. 24, and with the same variation as in St. 
Luke), and thus form the most incontestable and the most 
authentic speech of the Founder of our Religion : " This is My 
body ; This is My blood.'''' 

Two circumstances guide us to their historical meaning 
before we enter on them in detail. This first is that, on their 
very face, they appear before us as the crowning example of 
the style of Him whose main characteristic it was that He 
spoke and acted in parable, or proverb, or figure of speech. 
The second is that, though the words of the passage, as recorded 
in St. John's Gospel, could by no possibility have a direct 
reference to the Last Supper, which at the time of the dis- 
course at Capernaum, was still far in the distance, and to 
which, even when recording the sacred meal, the author of 
that Gospel makes no allusion, the probability is that they 
both contain the moral principle that is indicated in the out- 
ward act of the Eucharistic ordinance. What this general 
truth must be we have already indicated : namely, that, how- 



* Sydney Smyth, Lectures on Moral Philosophy, pp. 153, 154. 
t Herbert Spencer, Sociology, vol. i. pp. 259, 299, 300. 



96 CHRISTIAN INSTITUTIONS. 

ever material the expressions, the idea wrapped up in them 
is, as in all the teaching of Christ, not material, but spiritual, 
and that the conclusion to be drawn from them is not specu- 
lative, but moral and practical. All the converging sentiments 
of reverence for Him who spoke them, all our instinctive 
feeling of the unity of the Gospel narratives, would lead us in 
this direction even without any further inquiry into the par- 
ticular meaning of the separate phrases. In this general sense 
the meaning of the two words is indivisible, even as in the older 
Churches of Christendom the outward form of administra- 
tion confounds the two elements together — in the Roman 
Church by representing both in the bread, in the Greek Church 
by mixing both in the same moment. But there is neverthe- 
less a distinction which the original institution expresses, and 
of which the likeneas is preserved in all Protestant Churches 
by the separate administration of the elements. Following, 
therefore, this distinction between the two phrases, we will 
endeavor to ask what is the Biblical meaning, first of " the 
body" and then " the blood " of Christ. 

1. What are we to suppose that our Lord intended when, 
holding in His hands the large round Paschal cake, He brake 
it and said, " This is My body ?" And secondly, what are we 
to suppose that St. Paul meant when he said, speaking of the 
like action of the Corinthian Christians, " The bread which we 
break, is it not the communion of the body of Christ ?" 

It is maintained in the Church of Crete that the original 
bread is there preserved in fragments, and that this is the 
The Body literal perpetuation of the first sacramental " body." 
of Christ? Another like tradition prevails amongst the Nes- 
character. torians. John the Baptist gave to John the Evan- 
gelist some of the water from the baptism. Jesus gave to 
John two loaves at the Last Supper. John mixed his with 
the water of the Baptism and with the water and blood which 
he caught at the Crucifixion,* ground it all into powder and 
mixed it with flour and salt into a leaven which is still used. 
In all other churches the bread used can only by a dramatic 
figure be supposed to represent the original subject of the 
words of institution. The main question is the meaning, in 

* Cutts, Christianity under the Crescent, p. 24. 



THE BODY AND BLOOD OF CHRIST. 97 

the Gospels, of the word " body." As in other parts of the 
Bible, the hand, the heart, the face of God are used for God 
Himself, so the body, the flesh of Christ are used for Christ 
Himself, for His whole personality and character. "The 
body," "the flesh," "the bone," was the Hebrew expression 
for the identity of any person or any thing. " The body of 
heaven " * meant the very heaven, " the body of the day " 
meant the self same day,f the body of a man meant his full 
strength. J; Even if we were to suppose that He meant 
literally His flesh to be eaten — even if we adopted the belief 
which the Roman heathens ascribed to the early Christians, 
that the sacrament was a cannibals' feast — even then, unless 
Christianity had been the most monstrous of superstitions, 
this banquet of human flesh could have been of no use. It 
would have been not only revolting, but, by the nature of the 
case, unprofitable. What is external can never, except through 
the spirit, touch the spirit. To suppose that the material can 
of itself, reach the spiritual is not religion, but magic. As in 
the communion with our actual friends it is not the counte- 
nance that we value, but the mind which speaks through the 
countenance — it is not the sound of the words, bat the mean- 
ing of the words that we delight to hear — so also must it be in 
communion with One who, the more we know and think of Him, 
can have no other than a moral and spiritual relation to us. 
"After the flesh we know Him no more." It is, as the 
English Prayer Book expresses it, " His one oblation of Him- 
self once offered." It is not the mere name of Jesus " which 
sounds so sweet to a believer's ear," but the whole mass of 
vivifying associations which that name brings with it. The 
picture of Jesus which we require is not that fabled portrait 
sent to King Abgarus, or that yet more fabled portrait 
impressed on the handkerchief of Veronica, but the living 
image of His sweet reasonableness, His secret of happiness, 
His method of addressing the human heart. When, some 
years ago, one of the few learned divines of the Church of 
France, the Pere Gratry, wished to correct some erroneous 
representations of Christ, he sought for the true picture — le 
vrai tableau — not in the traditions of his own Church, nor in 

* Ex. xxiv. 10. t Gen. xvii. 23, 26. ± Job xxi. 83. 

5 



98 CHRISTIAN INSTITUTIONS. 

the consecrated wafer, but in the grand and impressive por- 
trait drawn by the profound insight of the foremost of 
Protestant theologians in the closing volumes of Ewald's 
"History of the People of Israel." The true "sacred heart" 
of Jesus is not the physical bleeding anatomical dissection of 
the Saviour's heart, such as appeared to the sickly visionary of 
France at Paray-le-Monial in the seventeenth century, but the 
wide embracing toleration and compassion which even to the 
holiest sons and daughters of France at that time was as 
a sealed book. The true cross of Christendom is not one or 
all of the wooden fragments, be they ever so genuine, found, 
or imagined to be found, by the Empress Helena, but, in the 
words of Goethe, " the depth of divine sorrow" of which the 
cross is an emblem. " It is," as Luther said, " that cross of 
Christ which is divided throughout the whole world not in 
the particles of broken wood, but that cross which comes to 
each as his own portion of life. Thou, therefore, cast not thy 
portion from thee, but rather take it to thee — thy suffering, 
whatever it be — as a most sacred relic, and. lay it up not in a 
golden or silver shrine, but in a golden heart, a heart clothed 
with gentle charity." Perhaps the strongest of all these 
expressions is " the Spirit " applied to the innermost part alike 
of God and of man. It is breathy wind* On one occasion 
we are told that our Saviour actually breathed on His disciples. 
But that breath, even though it was the most sacred breath of 
Christ, was not itself the Spirit — it was, and could be, only its 
emblem. 

And as the cross, the picture, the heart, the breath of Christ 
must of necessity point to something different from the mere 
outward form and symbol, so also "the body," which is 
represented in the sacramental bread or spoken of in the 
sacramental words, must of necessity be not the mere flesh 
and bones of the Redeemer, but that undying love of 
truth, that indefatigable beneficence, that absolute resigna- 
tion to His Father's will, by which alone we recognize His 
unique personality. The words that He spoke (so He Him- 
self said) were the spirit and the life of His existence — those 
words of which it was said at the close of a long and vener- 

* Sydney Smith, Lectures on Moral Philosophy, p. IS. 



TEE BODY AND BLOOD OF CHRIST. 99 

able career by one * who knew well the history of Christianity, 
that they, and they alone, contain the primal and indefeasible 
truths of the Christian religion which shall not pass away. 
That character and those words have been, and are, and will 
be, the true sustenance of the human spirit, and the heavenly 
manna of which it may be said, almost without a figure, that 
" He who gathers much has nothing over, and even he who 
gathers little has no lack." Such, amidst many inconsistencies, 
was the definition of "the body of Christ" even by some of 
the ancient fathers, Origen, Jerome, even Gregory called the 
Great. Such, amidst many contradictions, was the nobler 
view maintained at least in one remarkable passage even in 
the Roman Missal which states that where the sacrament can- 
not be had "sufficit vera fides et bona voluntas. Tantum 
crede et manducasti." It has been well said by a devout 
Scottish bishop, in speaking of this subject : " We should not 
expect to arrive at the secret of Hamlet by eating a bit of 
Shakespeare's body ; and so, though we ate ever so much of 
the material bones or flesh of the Founder of the Eucharist, 
we should not arrive one whit nearer to 'the mind which 
was in Christ Jesus.' " \ It is only by the mind that we can 
appropriate the mind and heart of Christ — only by the spirit 
that we can appropriate His spirit. And therefore (it is an 
old truth, but one which requires to be again and again 
repeated) all acts of so-called communion with Christ have no 
Biblical or spiritual meaning except in proportion as they 
involve or express a moral fellowship with the Holy, the Just, 
the Pure, and the Truthful, wherever His likeness can be 
found — except in proportion as our spirits, minds, and char- 
acters move in unison with the parables of the Prodigal Son, 
and the Good Samaritan, and the Faithful Servant, and the 
Good Shepherd ; with the Beatitudes on the Galilean mountain, 
with the resignation of Gethsemane, with the courage of 
Calvary. In proportion as the ordinance of the Eucharist 
enables us to do this, it is a true partaking of what the 
Gospels intended by the body of Christ ; in proportion as it 
fails to do this, it is no partaking of anything. 



* Milman's History of Latin Christianity, vol. vi. p. 638. 
t Memoir of Bishop Ewing. 



100 CHRISTIAN INSTITUTIONS. 

This is what is adumbrated in the English Communion 
Office, and by feebler expressions in the Roman Office, when it 
is said that every communicant pledges himself to walk in the 
steps of the great Self-sacrificer, and to offer himself a sacrifice 
of body, soul, and spirit to the Heavenly Father. We must 
incorporate and incarnate in ourselves — that is, in our moral 
natures — the substance, the moral substance, of the teaching 
and character of Jesus Christ. That is the only true transub- 
stantiation. We must raise ourselves above the base and 
mean and commonplace trivialties and follies of the world and 
of the Church to the lofty ideal of the Gospel story. That is 
the only true elevation of the Host. Nor is there anything 
fanciful or overstrained in the metaphor, when we grasp the 
substance of which it is the sign. The record of the life and 
death of Jesus Christ, however we interpret it, is, and must be, 
the body, the substance, the backbone of Christendom. 

2. And this leads us to pass from the meaning of the phrase 
in the Gospels to its meaning in the Epistles. St. Paul dis- 
The Body is tinctly tells us in the same Epistle as that in which 
the Church. h e gives the earliest narrative of the Supper (1 Cor. 
x. 16, 17), "For we being many are one bread and one 
body " — that is, as the bread is one loaf made up of many 
particles and crumbs, so the Christian society is one body made 
up of many members, and that body is the body of Christ. 
Christ is gone ; the body, the outward form and substance that 
takes His place, is the assembly, the congregation of all His 
true followers. In this sense " the body of Christ " is (as is 
expressed in the second prayer of the English Communion 
Office) " the blessed company of all faithful people." This is 
the " body " — the community and fellowship one with another 
which the Corinthian Christians were so slow to discern.* 
This is the sense in which the words are used in the vast 
majority of instances where the expression occurs in St. Paul's 
Epistles, f It is a use of the word which no doubt varies from 
that in which it is employed by Christ Himself, and thus 

* 1 Cor. xi. 29. Even if the words were as in the English Authorized Version 
" not discerning the Lord's body," the sense would still be governed by the 
uniform language of the Apostle. But the meaning is brought out still more 
strongly in the genuine text, where it is simply " not discerning the body." 

t Compare Rom. xii. 4, 5; 1 Cor. xii. 12, 13, 20, 27; Eph. iii. 6, ii. 16, iv. 4, 12, 
16 ; Col. l. 18, iii. 15, 19. 



THE BODY AND BLOOD OF CHRIST. 101 

shows the extraordinary freedom of the Apostle in dealing even 
with the most sacred phrases. But the doctrine is the same as 
that which in substance pervades the general teaching of our 
Lord — namely, that the wise, the good, the suffering every- 
where are His substitutes. "Wheresoever two or three are 
gathered together, there am I in the midst of them." " He 
that receiveth you receiveth Me." The whole point of the 
description of the Last Judgment is that even the good 
heathens having never heard His name, yet have seen Him 
and served Him, and when they ask Him "When saw we 
Thee? " He answers, without hesitation or reserve: " Inasmuch 
as ye did it to the least of these My brethren, ye did it unto 
Me. It was I who was hungry and ye gave Me food. It 
was I who was thirsty, and ye gave Me drink. It was I who 
was a friendless stranger, and ye took Me in. It was I who 
was naked, and ye clothed Me. It was I who was on my 
sick-bed, and ye visited Me. It was I who was shut up in 
prison, and ye visited Me." These good deeds, wherever 
practised, are the true signs that Christ and Christianity have 
been there. Even if practised without naming His name, they 
are still the trojmies of the victory over evil, for which He 
lived and died ; they are on the desert island of this mortal 
existence the footmarks which show that something truly 
human, and therefore truly divine, has passed that way. 

If this be so — if every faithful servant of truth and goodness 
throughout the. world is the representative of the Founder of 
our faith — if every friendless sufferer to whom we can render a 
service is as if Christ Himself appeared to us — then, not in the 
scholastic, but certainly in the Biblical sense of the word, there 
is a Real Presence diffused through our whole daily inter- 
course. It is the truth which the Swiss Reformer expressed, 
who, seeing a number of famished people around the church- 
door, said: "I will not enter the church over the body of 
Christ." And lest this should seem to be a vague or unimpres- 
sive or unedifying doctrine, we venture to draw out its con- 
sequences more at length. 

The whole of Christendom, the whole of humanity, is, in 
this sense, one body and many members. In the vast variety 
of human gifts and human characters, it is only by this sym- 
pathy, forbearance, appreciation of that which one has and the 



102 CHRISTIAN INSTITUTIONS. 

other lacks, that we reach that ideal of society such as St. Paul 
imagined, such as Butler in his Sermon on Human Nature so 
well sets forth. It is the old Roman fable of Menenius Agrippa 
taken up and sanctified by the Christian Apostle. It is, as the 
French would say, the recognition in the Bible of the " solidar- 
ity " of peoples, of churches, and of men. It is the protest 
against the isolated selfishness in which we often shut ourselves 
up against wider sympathies. And as a nation we are one 
body, drawn together by the long tradition and lineage which 
have made us of one flesh and blood. Blood is thicker than 
water. Except we acknowledge the unity of our common 
kindred, we have no true national life abiding in us. We are 
one " body politic " — a fine expression which St. Paul has 
taught us. Our unity as Englishmen is also our unity in Him 
of whom all the tribes and families in earth are named. We 
were made one nation and one race by the order of His prov- 
idence ; and they who make more of their party or their sect 
than of their country are refusing communion with the body 
of Him " whose fulness filleth all in all." And also as a 
Church, whether the Church Universal or the Church of our 
country, we are one body ; for the likenesses of character and 
opinion and pursuit which unite us, whether within the pale of 
the Church or without it, are but as so many bones and sinews, 
tissues and fibres, whereby " the whole body, being fitly joined 
together and compacted by that which every joint supplieth, 
maketh increase of the body unto the edifying of itself in 
love." And there is, also, the one body in which there is the 
one eternal communion of the living and the dead. Here the 
partitions of flesh fall away. Here there is but the communion 
of the spirit. But that communion is the deepest and the most 
enduring of all, for it is beyond the reach of time or chance. 
It can never be broken except by our own negligence and self- 
ishness. Whether it be the departure of a soul in the fulness 
of its glory and its usefulness, or of a soul burdened with the 
decay and weariness of its long pilgrimage, the union may and 
shall still subsist. " We do not count by months and years 
where they are gone to dwell;" we know only that they are in 
Him and with Him in whom we also live and move and have 
our being. They live because God lives, and we live or may 



THE BODY AND BLOOD OF CHRIST. 103 

live with them in that unity of soul and spirit which is beyond 
the grave and gate of death. 

3. We now propose to take the expression, the blood of 
Christy whether as used in the Gospels or in the Epistles.* 
First, is it the actual physical blood shed on the The blood of 
cross or flowing in the Redeemer's veins ? In the Christ. 
Middle Ages it was not an uncommon belief that drops of this 
blood had been preserved in various localities. There was the 
legend of the Sangrail or Holy Cup, or, as some used to read 
it, the Sangreal or the "real blood," said to have been brought 
by Joseph of Arimathea to Glastonbury and sought for by the 
Knights of King Arthur's Round Table. There is still shown 
in the church of Brussels a phial containing the blood — " the 
precious blood,'' as it is called — said to have been brought 
back by the Crusaders. There was another phial, which the 
Master of the Temple gave to Henry III., and which he carried 
in state from St. Paul's to Westminster Abbey, and of which 
drops were also shown at Ashridge and Hailes Abbey. The 
Abbey of Fecamp was also built to receive a casket which 
brought the like sacred liquid in a miraculous boat to the shores 
of Normandy. But even where these relics are not at once con- 
demned as fabulous or spurious, the shrines which contain 
them are comparatively deserted. The pilgrims to the churches 
at Fecamp and Brussels cannot be named in comparison with 
the crowds that flock to the modern centres of French devotion. 
And even as far back as the thirteenth century Thomas Aqui- 
nas speaks of these literal drops with indifference. 

Nor, again, was the actual bloodshed the most conspicuous 
characteristic of the Crucifixion. Modes of death there are 
where the scaffold is deluged with blood — where the specta- 
tors, the executioners, the victims, are plunged in the crimson 
stream. Not so in the few faint drops which trickled from the 
hands and feet of the Crucified, or which flowed from His 
wounded side. There was pallor, and thirst, and anguish, but 
the physical bloodshed was the last thing that a by-stander 
would have noticed. Nor, again, has it been supposed in the 



* The phrase "body of Christ" (with the exception of Heb. x. 5, 10) does 
not occur in other than St. Paul's Epistles. But the phrase "the blood of 
Christ " occurs also in the Epistles of St. Peter and St. John and that to the 
Hebrews. 



104 CHRISTIAN INSTITUTIONS. 

Roman Catholic Church, except by very ignorant persons, that 
the wine in the Eucharist is the actual physical blood of Christ. 
There is, indeed, a small chapel on the shores of the Lake of 
Bolsena in which are pointed out spots of blood as from the 
sacramental wine, and there was at Wilsnake, in the north of 
Germany, a napkin marked with similar stains. But these are 
now treated either with contempt or incredulity, or at the most 
as exceptional portents. 

It is obvious, then, that, alike in the Catholic and Protestant 
world, the expression "Blood of Christ" is by all thinking 
Christians regarded as a figure of speech, sacred and solemn, 
but still pointing to something beyond itself. What is that 
something ? The wine is confessedly the emblem of the blood 
of Christ. But the blood of Christ itself, when used as a re- 
ligious term, must also be the emblem of some spiritual reality. 
What is that spiritual reality ? 

What is the moral significance of blood ? It may be mani- 
fold. 

There is its peculiar meaning in the crimson color which 
overspreads the face in moments of great emotion. It has been 
well said : " If God made the blood of man, did He 
not much more make that feeling which summons 
the blood to his face, and makes fit the sign of guilt?" * and, 
we must also add, of just indignation, of honest shame, of in- 
genuous modesty ? It would be childish to speak of the mere 
color or liquid of the blood in these cases as the thing impor- 
tant. It would be imphilosophical, on the other hand, not to 
acknowledge the value of the moral quality of which the blood 
in these cases is the sure sign and sacrament. There is a 
famous passage in Terence in speaking of the features of a 
young man : " He blushes — his face glows with scarlet ; he is 
saved." (Erubruit ; salva res est.) He was saved by that 
which the mantling blood in his cheek represented. 

There is another idea of which blood is the emblem. It is 

the idea of suffering. A wound, a blow, produces the effusion 

Sufferin °^ ^lood, an( ^ blood therefore suggests the idea of 

pain. This is no doubt part of the thought in such 

passages as " This is He that came by water and by bldod," or, 

* Sydney Smith, Lectures on Moral Philosophy, p. 11. 



THE BODY AND BLOOD OF CHRIST. 105 

* Without shedding of blood there is no remission," or again 
in the magnificent description of the conqueror of Edom (Isa. 
lxiii. 1-3) advancing knee-deep in the blood, whether of himself 
or his enemies, the lively expression of the truth that without 
exertion there can be no victory — that " via cruris, via lucisP 
It is the thought so well set forth in Keble's hymn on the Cir- 
cumcision : 

Like sacrificial wine 

Poured on a victim's head 
Are those few precious drops of Thine 

Now first to offering led. 

They are the pledge and seal 

Of Christ's unswerving faith 
Given to His Sire, our souls to heal, 

Although it cost His death.* 

But these and all other moral senses which we can attach to 
the word blood run up into a more general and also a more 
Biblical significance. " The blood of a living thing The inner- 
is the life thereof." This expression of the old JJjJJ^J 
Jewish Law, many times repeated, well harmonizes Christ. 
with the language of Harvey : " Blood is the fountain of life, 
the first to live, and the last to die, and the primary seat of the 
animal soul." \ When any one was described as shedding his 
blood for another, or sealing a testament or will or covenant 
with his blood, it was meant that he sealed or signed it with 
whatever was most precious, most a part of himself. The 
blood is the life-blood — is, as it were, the very soul of those 
who give it. The spot of blood placed on the altar, whether 
of human or animal sacrifice, the streak of blood from the 
Paschal lamb on the forehead of Jew or Samaritan, repre- 
sented the vital spark of the dead creature which a few mo- 
ments before had been full of life and vigor. 

As, then, the body of Christ, in the language of Scrip- 
ture, means (as we saw) one of two things — either His general 
character and moral being;, or the Christian and hu- 
man society which now represents Him — so the blood 
of Christ in like manner means the inmost essence of His char- 
acter, the self of His self, or else the inmost essence of the Chris - 

* This, is well set forth in an interesting volume lately published by Dr. 
Story, of Rosneath, entitled Creed and Conduct (pp. 77-92). 

t Lev. xvii. 4. See Speaker's Commentary, vol. i. part ii. p. 836; Ewald, An- 
tiquities of the People of Israel, pp. 35-41, 44-62 (Eng. transl.). 

5* 



106 CHRISTIAN INSTITUTIONS. 

tian society, the life-blood of Christendom and humanity. And 
therefore we must ask yet another question : What is the 
most essential characteristic, the most precious part of Christ, 
the most peculiar and vivifying element of Christendom? This 
question is not so easy to answer in a single word. Differ- 
ent minds would take a different view of that which to 
them constitutes the one thing needful, the one indispensable 
element of the Christian life. To some it would seem to be 
freedom, to others intellectual progress, to others justice, to 
others truth, to others purity. But looking at the Bible only, 
and taking the Bible as a whole — asking what is at once the 
most comprehensive and the most peculiar characteristic of the 
life of Jesus Christ and of the best spirits of Christendom — we 
cannot go far astray in adopting the only definition of the blood 
of Christ which has come down to us from primitive times. It 
is contained in one of the three undisputed, or at any rate 
least disputed, epistles of Ignatius of Antioch. " The blood of 
Christ," he said, " is love or charity." * With this unquestion- 
ably agrees the language of the New Testament as to the es- 
sential characteristic of God and of Christ. Love, unselfish 
love, is there spoken of again and again as the fundamental 
essence of the highest life of God ; and it is also evident on 
the face of the Gospels that it is the fundamental motive and 
characteristic of the life and death of Christ. It is this love 
stronger than death, this love manifesting itself in death, this 
love willing to spend itself for others, that is the blood of the 
life in which God is well pleased. Not the pain or torture of 
the cross — for that was alike odious to God and useless to 
man — but the love, the self-devotion, the generosity, the mag- 
nanimity, the forgiveness, the toleration, the compassion, of 
which that blood was the expression, and of which that life 
and death were the fulfilment. " Non sanguine sed pietate 
placatur Deus " is the maxim of more than one of the Fathers. 
" What is the blood of Christ ?" asked Livingstone of his own 
solitary soul in the last months of his African wanderings. 
" It is Himself. It is the inherent and everlasting mercy of 
God made apparent to human eyes and ears. The everlasting 
love was disclosed by our Lord's life and death. It showed 

* Ignatius Ad Trail. 8. 



THE BODY AND BLOOD OF CHRIST. 107 

that God forgives because He loves to forgive. He rules, if 
possible, by smiles aud not by frowns. Pain is only a means 
of enforcing love." * The charity of God to men, the charity 
of men to one another with all its endless consequences — if it 
be not this, what is it ? If there be any other characteristic of 
Christ more essential to His true nature, any message of the 
gospel more precious than this, let us know it. But till we 
are told of any other we may rest contented with believing 
that it is that which St. John himself describes as the essence 
of the nature of God (" God is love "), which St. Paul de- 
scribes as the highest of the virtues of man (" The greatest of 
these is love"). It is that which Charles Wesley, in one of his 
most beautiful hymns, describes as the best answer to the soul 
inquiring after God : not justification or conversion, but — 

Come, O Thou Traveller unknown ! 

"Whom still I hold, but cannot see; 
Speak, or Thou never hence shalt move, 
And tell me if Thy name be Love. 
In vain I have not wept and strove : 
Thy nature and Thy name is Love. 

It is that which John Keble, in a poem of which the senti- 
ment might have been from Whichcote or Schleiermacher, 
describes as the best answer to the inquiry after the religious 
life of man : not the sacraments, not the creeds, but — 

Wouldst thou the life of souls discern? 

Nor human wisdom nor divine 
Helps thee by aught beside to learn: 

Love is life's only sign. 

It is that which Ken, in a fine passage at the beginning of his 
" Approach to the Altar," thus states with a bold latitudinari- 
anism, like indeed to the theology of his hymns, but widely at 
variance with the dogmatic rigidity of the school to which he 
belonged : " To obtain eternal life, all I am to do is reduced to 
one word only, and that is ' love.' This is the first and great 
command, which comprehends all others — the proper evangel- 
ical grace The love of God is a grace rather felt than 

defined. It is the general tendency and inclination of the 
whole man, of all his heart and soul and strength, of all his 
powers and affections, and of the utmost strength of them all, 

* Livingstone's Journal, August 5, 1873. The word used is "What is the 
atonement?" But he evidently meant the same thing. 



108 CHBISTIAN INSTITUTIONS. 

to God as his chief and only and perfect and infinite good.'* 
It is therefore not only from Calvary, but from Bethlehem 
and Nazareth and Capernaum — not only from the Crucifixion, 
but from all His acts of mercy and words of wisdom — that "the 
blood of Christ " derives its moral significance. As so often 
in ordinary human lives, so in that Divine life, the death was 
the crowning consummation ; but as in the best human lives, 
as in the best deaths of the best men, so also in that Divine 
death, the end was of value only or chiefly because it corre- 
sponded so entirely to the best of lives. Doubtless love is not 
the only idea of perfection — kindness is not the only idea of 
Heaven. The terrible sufferings of this present world are, we 
all know, very difficult to reconcile with the belief that its 
Maker is all-loving. Yet still the gospel story leaves no doubt 
that unselfish kindness and compassion were the leading prin- 
ciples of the life of Christ; and the history of Christendom 
leaves no doubt that unselfish benevolence and kindness are 
the most valuable elements of the life of society. 

If we now turn to the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper, and 
ask in what special way the fruit of the grape, the chalice of 
the Communion, represent the love of Christ and the love of 
His followers, the answer is twofold. 

First, as being at a farewell feast, it was the likeness of the 
blood shed, as we have already noticed, in the signing and 
sealing of treaties or covenants. The earliest account of the 
Theattesta- institution of the Eucharist (1 Cor. xi. 25) expresses 
tion - this directly. Not " This is my blood," but " This 

is the New Covenant in my blood.' 1 '' It was the practice of the 
ancient Arabs to sign their treaties with blood drawn from 
their own veins. Even in modern times, when the Scottish 
peasants and nobles desired to express their adhesion to the 
Solemn League and Covenant, they in some instances wrote 
their names with their blood. There are also examples of 
conspirators binding themselves together by the practice of 
drinking a cup filled with human blood, as the most solemn 
mode of testifying their adhesion to each other. There is again 
the expression and the image familiar to all of us, of the sol- 
dier, the martyr, the patriot shedding his blood for the good 
of his country, his cause, his religion. From the blood of the 
righteous Abel to the blood of Zacharias who was slain be- 



THE BODY AND BLOOD OF CHRIST. 109 

tween the temple and the altar, from the blood of Zacharias to 
the last soldier who shed his blood on behalf of his country, it 
is the supreme offering which any human being can make to 
loyalty, to duty, to faith. And of all these examples of the 
sacrifice of life, of the shedding of blood, the most sacred, the 
most efficacious, is that which was offered and shed on Cal- 
vary, because it was the offering made not for war or aggres- 
sion, but for peace and reconciliation ; not in hatred, but in 
love ; not by a feeble, erring, ordinary mortal, but by Him who 
is by all of us acknowledged to be the Ideal of man and the 
Likeness of God. It is, therefore, this final and supreme test 
of our love and loyalty that the cup of the Eucharist suggests 
- — our willingness, if so be, to sacrifice our own selves, to shed 
our own blood for what we believe to be right and true and 
for the good of others. 

And secondly, the use of wine to represent the blood — that 
is, the love — of Christ, conveys to us the profound thought 
that as wine makes glad the heart of man, so the The enthu- 
love of God, the love of Christ, the love of man for siasm. 
God and men, makes glad the heart of those who come with- 
in its invigorating, enkindling influence. In that fierce war 
waged in the fifteenth century by the Bohemian nation in 
order to regain the use of the sacramental wine which the 
Roman Church had forbidden, when they recovered the use of 
it, the sacred cup or chalice was henceforth carried as a trophy 
in front of their armies. With them it was a mere pledge of 
their ecclesiastical triumph, a token of their national independ- 
ence. But with us, when we turn from the outward thing to 
the thing signified, it is only too true that Catholics and Protest- 
ants alike have lost the cup from their Communion feasts. If, 
as we have said, the blood of Christ, of which the sacred wine 
is the emblem, in itself signifies the self-denying, life-giving 
love * of Christ, have not we often lost from our lives and our 
ordinances that which is the life of all Christian life, and the 
wine of all Christian ordinances — namely, the love or charity 
" without which whosoever liveth is counted dead before 
God ?" Whosoever regains that chalice, whosoever pours that 

* George Herbert : 

Love is that liquor sweet and most divine. 
Which my God feels as blood, and I as wine. 



HO CHRISTIAN INSTITUTIONS. 

new wine into our dead hearts, may well bear it as a trophy 
before the Christian armies. The ground on which the 
Roman Church withheld the literal wine from all but the 
officiating priest was the scruple lest the material liquid might 
possibly be spilled. Our ground for insisting on the cup for 
the laity ought to be that the Divine charity of which the cup 
of the Communion is the emblem belongs to the whole Church. 
To recover that holy cup, that real life-blood of the Redeemer, 
is a quest worthy of all the chivalry of our time, worthy of 
all the courage of Lancelot, worthy of all the purity of Gala- 
had. 

This is the wine of that heavenly enthusiasm of which a 
Persian sage sang of old : " Bring me a cup of wine, not that 
wine which drives away wisdom, but that unmixed wine whose 
hidden force vanquishes faith — that clear wine which sanctifies 
the garb of the heart — that illuminating wine which shows to 
lovers of the world the true path — that purifying wine which 
cleanses the meditative mind from fanciful thoughts." * This 
is indeed the likeness of the blood which spoke better things 
than the blood of Abel, because it was not the mere material 
blood of an innocent victim, but it was, and is, the aspiring 
love and life which sank not into the ground, but rose again 
to be the love and life of a regenerated world. 

And this leads us to ask yet one more question. What is 
the moral effect of this life-blood of the Christian spirit ? The 
The cleans- answer is given by St. John (1 John i. V, 9) : "It 
in s- cleanseth us from all sin," or, as is said in the words 

just following, " cleanseth us from all unrighteousness" from all 
injustice, unequal dealing, iniquity. This figure of cleansing 
or washing, which occurs often in the Bible in this connection 
with blood, seems to be taken not so much from the Hebrew 
worship as from the Mithraic or Persian sacrifices then so 
common, in which the worshippers were literally bathed in a 
stream of blood, not merely sprinkled or touched, but plunged 
from head to foot as in a baptism of blood. The figure in 
itself is revolting. But its very strangeness throws us far 
away from the sign to the reality. It means that where any 
soul is imbued with a love, a charity like that of Christ, sur- 

* Sacred Anthology, p. 167. 



TEE BODY AND BLOOD OF CHRIST. m 

rounded, bathed in this as in a holy atmosphere, withdrawn by 
the contemplation of His death and by the spirit of his life 
from all the corrupting influences of the world or the Church, 
there the sin, the hatred, the uncharitableness, the untruthful- 
ness of men are purified and washed away. So far as the 
blood — that is, the self-sacrificing love — of Christ effects this, 
so far it has done its work ; so far as it has not done this, it 
has been shed in vain. It is said that a young English soldier 
of gay and dissolute life was once reading this chapter of St. 
John, and when he came to the passage — " The blood of Jesus 
Christ . . . cleanseth us from all sin" — he started up and 
exclaimed : " Then henceforth I will live, by the grace of God, 
as a man should live who has been washed in the blood of 
Jesus Christ."* That was Hedley Vicars. And by this 
thought he lived thenceforth a pure and spotless life. That 
was indeed to be " cleansed by the blood of Christ." It was 
an example the more striking, because probably unconscious, 
of the true meaning of the cleansing effect of " the blood " — 
that is, the unselfish life and death — of Christ. Cleansing, 
bathing, washing — these, of course, are figures of speech when 
applied to the soul. But they must mean for the soul what is 
meant by cleansing as applied to the body. When, for 
example, we pray with the Psalmist, "Make clean our hearts 
within us," we pray that our motives may be made free from 
all those by-ends and self-regards that spoil even some of the 
finest natures. When the prophet said that our sins should be 
made " as white as wool," he meant that so great is the power 
of the human will, and of the grace of Cod, that the human 
character can be transformed — that the soul which once was 
stained deep with the red spots of sin can become white as 
driven snow. When we speak of Christ Himself as the spot- 
less immaculate Lamb, we mean that He was really without 
spot of sin. When we speak of ourselves as washed in the 
blood of that Lamb, we ought to mean not that we continue 
"just as we were," with a cleanness imputed to us in which 



* The belief that a bath of blood has a purifying effect appears from time to 
time in the stories of kings, suffering from dreadful maladies, bathing them- 
selves in the blood of children— Pharaoh (Midrash on Ex. ii. 23), Constantine, 
Charles IX. of France. For this reason baptism was often said to be " in the 
blood of Christ." See Wilberforce, Doctrine of the Eucharist, p. 238. 



112 CHRISTIAN INSTITUTIONS. 

our characters have no share, but that our un charitableness, 
our untruthfulness, our cowardice, our vulgarity, our unfair- 
ness, are, so far as human infirmity will permit, washed out. 
When in one part of the English Communion Service we pray 
that our souls may be washed in the blood of Christ, it is the 
same prayer as in substance we pray in that other collect in 
another part of the same office which John Wesley declared 
to be * the summary of the primitive religion of love, the sum- 
mary of the religion of the Church of England : " Cleanse the 
thoughts of our hearts by the inspiration of Thy Holy Spirit, 
that we may perfectly love Thee and worthily magnify Thy 
holy name." When, in the well-known hymns which are often 
sung in excited congregations, we speak of " the fountain 
filled with blood drawn from Emmanuel's veins, where sinners 
plunged beneath that flood lose all their guilty stains," these 
passages, unless they are only figures without substance, must 
be the prayer which goes up from every soul which feels the 
desire to be cleansed from all those defilements of passion 
or falsehood or self-conceit or hatred which will doubtless 
cling to us more or less to the end of our mortal life, but dis- 
appear in proportion as we are bathed in the Spirit of eternal 
love and purity. It is the same prayer as that which is ex- 
pressed in more refined and chastened language by our own 
living Laureate in his poem on St. Agnes : 

Make thou my spirit pure and clear 
As are the frosty skies; 

or in the yet sublimer invocation of Milton to Him who pre- 
fers 

Before all temples the upright heart and pure. 

But perhaps we ought still to ask — How is it that the love of 
Christ, which is the love of man and the love of God, and 
which is the life-blood of the Christian religion — how is it 
that this love cleanses and purifies the character ? Why is it, 
more than justice or truth or courage, described as the regen- 
erating element of the human heart? To do this at length 
would be beyond our limits. In a philosophic sense it is well 
drawn out in Butler's Sermon on the Love of God. With all 

* Wesley's Sermons, vol. iii. p. 424. 



THE BODY AND BLOOD OF CHRIST H3 

the energy of an impassioned and devout soul it is drawn out 
in the sermons and letters of Charles Kingsley. But still, in 
order to show that we are not merely dealing in generalities, 
take some of the special forms in which true affection has this 
effect in human life. Take gratitude. We have known some 
one who has done us a lasting service. We wish to repay the 
kindness. In ninety-nine cases out of a hundred we cannot 
repay it better than by showing that we are worthy of it. 
We have, by the exertions of such a good friend, been placed 
in a good situation or set in a good way of life. We keep in 
mind the effect which our good or evil conduct will have on 
them. It will wound them to the quick if we deceive or dis- 
appoint their expectations. It will be as sunshine to their life 
if we do credit to their recommendation. The boy at school, 
the public officer ministering for the public good, the private 
clerk in some responsible situation, the servant in a household 
great or small, may have always before them the image of 
their "benefactor. The love, the gratitude, which they bear, or 
ought to bear, towards him, will cleanse and purify their 
hearts. If he or she is still living, we may think what it 
would be to meet them with an open or a shame-stricken 
countenance. The love which they have shown to us, and the 
gratitude we feel, will drive out the evil spirit. 

Or, again, gratitude for some great benefit, say a recovery 
from illness. It may have been a recovery for which many 
have anxiously watched — a recovery which has, as it were, 
given us a new lease of life. He who responds to that experi- 
ence will have his heart softened, opened, cleansed. That 
heart which refuses to be softened, opened, and cleansed, 
after such an experience, must be as hard as the nether mill- 
stone. Such a one, wherever he may be, if indeed he has so 
little of the grateful sense of good received, has trodden under 
foot the love of " the everlasting covenant " which nature as 
well as grace has made between man and man, between man 
and God. 

Or, again, the love, the pure affections, of home. We 
sometimes hear it said that during the last few years the 
bonds of English society are relaxed, the fountains of English 
morality poisoned — that things are talked of* and tolerated, 
and practised, which in the former generation would have 



114 CHRISTIAN INSTITUTIONS. 

been despised, condemned, and put down. Against these 
defiling, destroying, devastating influences, what is the safe- 
guard? It is surely the maintenance, the encouragement, of> 
that pure domestic love of which we just now spoke. Dr. 
Chalmers used to preach of the expulsive force of a new affec- 
tion. But it is enough for our purpose to have the expulsive 
force of an old affection — of that old, very old affection 
which lies in the vitals of human society, which is truly its 
life-blood — the affection of son for father and mother, of hus- 
band for w T ife and of wife for husband, of brother for sister 
and of sister for brother. Such an element of affection is the 
salt of the national existence, is the continuation of the re- 
membrance of that sacred blood of which we are told "to 
drink and be thankful." He who turns his back on these 
home affections has left himself open to become the prey, 
whether in the upper or the lower classes, of the basest and 
vilest of men, of the basest and vilest of women. 

Or, again, the love of our country, or, if we prefer so to put 
it, the love of the public good. It is no fancy to call these 
feelings by so strong a name. They who have felt it know 
that it is a passion which cheers us amidst the greatest diffi- 
culties, which consoles us even in the deepest private calami- 
ties. And it is a passion in the presence of which the meaner 
trivialities of existence wither and perish. It is a passion in 
the absence of which there grows up falsehood, and intrigue, 
and vulgar insolence, and selfish ambition, and rancorous faction. 
It was a passion which animated our great statesmen of times 
gone by — Chatham, Pitt, Fox, Canning, Wellington, and Peel. 
It was a passion which once cleansed our Augean stable, which 
flowed like a generous wine through the veins of the Common- 
wealth and to the extremeties of society. Whether it is now 
more or less potent than it was then, whether the public ser- 
vice of the state is sought after, or the great questions of the 
day taken up, more or less than formerly, from the large and 
sincere conviction of their truth and their goodness, or only, 
or chiefly, for temporary or personal purposes, let those an- 
swer who best know. Only, whenever this lofty passion shall 
cease in the high places of our land, that the end is not far 
off; then the blood of patriots will have been wasted, the 
blood of heroes and of martyrs will have been shed in vain ; 



THE BODY AND BLOOD OF CHRIST H5 

and with the decay of public spirit and of the affection of our 
best citizens for our common country, the moral health and 
strength of State and of Church, of statesmen and of private 
men, will dwindle, pale, and pine as surely as a sickly frame 
through which the life-blood has ceased to permeate. 

These are some of the examples of the way in which single 
disinterested affection for what is good makes all duties easy 
and all vices difficult, and so fulfils the law of God. For the 
purification thus effected by the love of friends, home, and 
country is the likeness of what may be effected by that love 
through which the Supreme Goodness comes down to earth, 
and through which our imperfect goodness ascends to heaven. 

In this brief summary of the Biblical meaning of the words 
"Body and Blood of Christ," it has been intended not so 
much to run counter to any metaphysical theories on the 
Eucharist, as to indicate that the only important significance 
to be attached to the Biblical words belongs to a region 
which those theories hardly touch, and which, therefore, may 
be treated beyond and apart from most of the controversies 
on the subject. In some phrases of the Roman Missal, and 
perhaps still more in parts of the Roman practice, it is diffi- 
cult to avoid the impression that a magical process is implied 
of material particles touching the mind as though it were 
matter. This accordingly became synonymous with the 
most vulgar form of sleight of hand. The sacred phrase of 
" Hoc est corpus " by a natural descent was corrupted into 
"hocus pocus." The obligation of fasting before the Com- 
munion has been confirmed, if not originated, by the notion 
that the matter of the sacramental substance might meet 
the matter of ordinary food in the process of physical 
digestion. In the Communion Offices of the Reformed 
Churches, including the English, traces of these material 
traditions linger, and the higher purpose of moral improvement 
originally implied in the words has perhaps been also thrown 
into the background by the prominence of the historical and 
commemorative element. Still, even in the Roman Office, and 
much more in the Protestant Offices, the moral element is 
found, and probably, to the more enlightened members of all 
Churches, the idea is never altogether absent, that the main 



116 CHRISTIAN INSTITUTIONS. 

object of the Eucharist is the moral improvement of the com- 
municants. Nevertheless, it is necessary to bring out as 
strongly as possible this moral element as the primary, it is 
hardly too much to say the sole meaning of the words on 
which the institution of the Eucharist is founded. It may be 
that the moral intention of these sacred phrases and acts is, 
unconsciously, if not consciously, so deeply embedded in their 
structure as to render any such exposition unnecessary. It 
may be that the signs, the shadows, the figures have been or 
shall be so raised above what is local, material, and temporary 
that they shall be almost inseparable from the moral improve- 
ment which alone is the true food,* the true health of the soul. 
But possibly the materialism of the ecclesiastical sacristy, 
keeping pace with the materialism of the philosophic school, 
may so undermine the spiritual element of this — almost the 
only external ordinance of Christianity — as to endanger the 
ordinance itself. Possibly the carnal and material may so 
absorb and obliterate the spiritual, that it will be necessary in 
the name of Religion to expect some change in the outward 
forms of the sacrament, not less incisive than those which in 
former ages by the general instinct of Christendom swept 
away those parts which have now perished forever. Infant 
Communion, once universal throughout the whole Church, and 
still retained in the East, has been forbidden throughout the 
whole Western Church, Catholic and Protestant alike. Daily 
Communion, universal in the primitive Church, has for the 
vast majority of Christians been discontinued both in the East 
and West. Evening Communion, the original time of the 
ordinance, has been forbidden by the Roman Church. Soli- 
tary Communion has been forbidden in the English Church. 
Death-bed Communion has been forbidden in the Scottish 
Church. It is difficult to imagine changes, short of total abo- 
lition, more sweeping than these. But yet they were induced 
by the repugnance of the higher instinct of Christendom to 
see its most sacred ceremony degraded into a charm. It is 
possible that the metaphors of the Bible on this subject shall 
be felt to have been so misused and distorted that they also 

* There is a striking passage in Fenelon to the effect that the true food of the 
soul is moral goodness. Meditations on the Sixteenth Day. 



THE BODY AND BLOOD OF CHRIST. H7 

shall pass into the same abeyance as has already overtaken 
some expressions which formerly were no less dear to pious 
hearts than these. The use of the language of the Canticles, 
such as was familiar to St. Bernard and Samuel Rutherford, 
has become impossible, and many terms used in St. Paul's 
Epistles to the Romans and Galatians on Predestination and 
Justification are now but very rarely heard in ordinary pulpits. 
But, whatever betide, it is alike the duty and the hope, 
whether of those who fondly cling to these forms or words, 
or of those who think, perhaps too boldly, that they can dis- 
pense with them, to keep steadily in view the moral realities, 
for the sake of which alone (if Christianity be the universal 
religion) such forms exist, and which will survive the dis- 
appearance even of the most venerable ordinances, even of the 
most sacred phrases. 



X18 CHRISTIAN INSTITUTIONS. 



CHAPTER VII. 

ABSOLUTION. 

It is well known that in certain parts of Christendom, and 
in certain sections of the English Church, considerable impor- 
tance is attached to the words which appear in the Gospels of 
St. Matthew and St. John, as justifying the paramount duty 
of all Christians to confess their sins to presbyters, who have 
received episcopal ordination, and the exclusive right of 
presbyters, so appointed, to absolve them. 

It is not here intended to enter on the various objections 
raised on moral grounds to this theory. But it may be use- 
ful to show the original meaning of the words, and then trace 
their subsequent history. It will be then seen that, whatever 
other grounds there may be for the doctrine or practice in 
question, these passages have either no relation to it, or that 
whatever relation they have is the exact contradiction of the 
theory in question. 

The texts are (in English) as follows : 

The address to Peter (Matt. xvi. 19): " Whatsoever thou 
shalt bind on earth shall be bound in heaven : and whatsoever 
thou shalt loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven." 

The address to the disciples (Matt, xviii. 18) : "Whatsoever 
ye shall bind on earth shall be bound in heaven : and what- 
soever ye shall loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven." 

The address to the disciples (John xx. 23) : "Whosesoever 
sins ye remit, they are remitted unto them : and whosesoever 
sins ye retain they are retained." 

We will first take the two passages in the Gospel of St. 
Matthew. For the purposes of this argument the words 
addressed to St. Peter need not be distinguished from the 
words addressed to the disciples, as they are in each case 
identically the same.* 

* For their peculiar meaning as addressed to St. Peter, it may be permitted 
to refer to a volume published many years ago, entitled Sermons and Essays 
on the Apostolic Age s pp. 127-34. 



ABSOLUTION. 119 

I. The phrase "binding" and "loosing" meant, in the lan- 
guage of the Jewish schools, declaring what is right and what is 
wrong. If any Master, or Rabbi, or Judge, declared Binding and 
a thing to be right or true, he was said to have loosing, 
loosed it ; if he declared a thing to be wrong or false, he 
was said to have bound it. That this is the original meaning 
of the words has been set at rest beyond possibility of ques- 
tion since the decisive quotations given by the most learned 
Hebrew scholars of the seventeenth century.* The meaning, 
therefore, of the expressions, as addressed to the first disciples, 
was that, humble as they seemed to be, yet, by virtue of the 
new spiritual life and new spiritual insight which Christ 
brought into the world, their decisions in cases of right and 
wrong would be invested with all and more than all the 
authority which had belonged before to the Masters of the 
Jewish Assemblies, to the Rulers and Teachers of the Syna- 
gogues. It was the same promise as was expressed in sub- 
stance in those other well-known passages : " It is not ye that 
speak, but the Spirit of My Father which speaketh in you." 
" He that is spiritual judgeth all things." " Ye have an 
unction from the Holy One, and ye know all things, and need 
not that any one should teach you." " The Comforter shall 
lead you into all truth." 

The sense thus given is as adequate to the occasion as it is 
certainly true. In the new crisis through which the world 
was to pass, they — the despised scholars of a despised Master 
— were to declare what was 'changeable and what was 
unchangeable, what was eternal, what was transitory, what 
was worthy of approval, and what was worthy of condem- 
nation. They were to declare the innocence of a thousand 
customs of the Gentile world, which their Jewish countrymen 
had believed to be sinful ; they were to declare the exceeding 
sinfulness of a thousand acts which both Jews and Pagans had 
believed to be virtuous or indifferent. They were empowered 
to announce with unswerving confidence the paramount 
importance of charity, and the supreme preciousness of 
truth. They were empowered to denounce with unsparing con- 



* " Hebrew and Talmudical Exercitations upon the Evangelist St. Matthew 
(xvi. 19). By John Lightfoot, D.D." Works, vol. ii. pp. 206-7. 



120 CHRISTIAN INSTITUTIONS. 

demnation the meanness of selfishness, the sacrilege of 
impurity, the misery of self-deceit, the impiety of unchari- 
tableness. And what the first generation of Christians, to 
whom these words were addressed, thus decided, has on the 
whole been ratified in heaven — has on the whole been ratified 
by the voice of Providence in the subsequent history of man- 
kind. By this discernment of good and evil the Apostolic 
writers became the lawgivers of the civilized world. Eigh- 
teen hundred years have passed, and their judgments in all 
essential points have never been reversed. 

The authority or the accuracy of portions of the New Testa- 
ment on this or that point is often disputed. The grammar, 
the arguments, the history of the authors of tbe Gospels and 
Epistles can often be questioned. But that which must govern 
us all — their declaration of the moral standard of mankind, 
the ideal they have placed before us of that which is to guide 
our conduct — which is, after all, as has been said by Matthew 
Arnold, three-fourths of human life — has hardly been ques- 
tioned at all by the intelligent and upright part of mankind. 
The condemnation of sins, the commendation of graces, in St. 
Matthew's description of the Beatitudes, in St. Luke's descrip- 
tion of the Prodigal Son, in St. John's description of the con- 
versation with the woman of Samaria, in St. Peter's declaration 
that in every land " he that worketh righteousness (of what- 
ever creed or race) is accepted of God," in St. Paul's descrip- 
tion of charity, in St. James's description of pure religion — 
have commanded the entire* assent of the world, of Boling- 
broke and Voltaire no less than of Thomas a Kempis and 
Wesley, because these moral judgments bear on their face that 
stamp of the divine, the superhuman, the truly supernatural, 
which critical inquiry cannot touch, which human wisdom and 
human folly alike, whilst they may be unwilling or unable to 
fulfil the precepts, yet cannot deny. This is the original mean- 
ing in which the judgments of the first Christians in regard to 
sin and virtue were ratified in heaven. It is necessary to insist 
on this point in order to show that an amply sufficient force 
and solemnity is inherent in the proper meaning of the words, 
without resorting to fictitious modes of aggrandizing them in 
directions for which they were not intended. 

The signification of the phrase in John xx. 23, translated in 



ABSOLUTION. 121 

the Authorized Version " remitting and retaining sins," is not 
equally clear. The words used (acpievai, i'cpeGiS) Remitti 
do not of necessity mean the declaration of the in- and retain- 
nocence or lawfulness of any particular act; still m s sms - 
less does the corresponding phrase (upatsiv) necessarily mean 
the declaration of its unlawfulness. It may be that the words 
rendered "remit sin" are (as in Mark i. 4; Luke iii. 3) equiva- 
lent to the abolition or dismissal of sin, and it would be the 
natural meaning of the word rendered " retain sin " that it 
should signify, as in all the other passages of the New Testa- 
ment where it occurs, " to control," " conquer," " subdue sin." 
In that case the words would describe, not the intellectual or 
didactic side .of the Apostolic age, but its moral and practical 
side, and would correspond to numerous other passages, such 
as, "Ask and it shall be given unto you;" "If ye will say unto 
this mountain, Be thou removed and be thou cast into the sea, 
it shall be done ;" " He that humbleth himself shall be exalted ;" 
" Inasmuch as ye have done it unto the least of these My 
brethren, ye have done it unto Me;" " Greater works than these 
shall ye do ;" " Be of good cheer, I have overcome the world ;" 
"Sanctify them through Thy truth;" "My grace is sufficient 
for thee ;" " I can do all things through Christ that strengthen- 
eth me ;" " He that overcometh and keepeth My words unto 
the end, to him will I give power over the nations." If this 
assurance of the moral victory of the Apostolic age over sin be 
the meaning of the phrases, then here also it may be affirmed, 
without fear of contradiction, that, on the whole, and with the 
necessary reserves of human imperfection, the moral superior- 
ity of the first age of Christendom to those which preceded 
and those which f llowed was very remarkable, and that such a 
fulfilment well corresponded to the significant act of the breath- 
ing of the spirit of goodness or holiness upon those to whom 
the words were addressed. But on this interpretation we need 
not insist. It is necessary to point it out in order to show that 
the passage is not clear from ambiguity. But it is enough if, 
as is commonly supposed, the words, by some peculiar turn of 
the Fourth Gospel, are identical in meaning with those in St. 
Matthew. In that case all that we have said of the address to 
Peter and the address to the disciples in the First Gospel 
applies equally to this address in the Fourth. 
6 



122 CHRISTIAN INSTITUTIONS. 

II. Such, then, was the promise as spoken in the first instance. 
In the literal sense of the words this fulfilment of them can 
hardly occur again. 

No other book of equal authority with the New Testament 
has ever issued from mortal pen. No epoch has spoken on 
Universal moral questions with a voice so powerful as the 
application. Apostolic age. Shakespeare, Milton, Bacon, and 
Hegel may be of a wider range. Yet they do not rise to the 
moral dignity of the best parts of the New Testament. When 
we leave the purely personal and historical application of these 
words, then, as in all our Lord's words and precepts, the whole 
point of the words is, that they are spoken, not to any one 
person or order of men, or succession of men, but to the whole 
Christian community of all time — to any in that community 
that partake of the same spirit, and in proportion as they par- 
take of the same moral qualities as filled the first hearers of the 
gospel. When it is sometimes alleged that the promise to 
Peter was exclusively fulfilled in the Bishops of Rome, who, 
centuries afterwards, were supposed to have been his successors, 
it would be just as reasonable, or we may say just as unreason- 
able, as to say that all the Bishops of Ephesus were specially 
loved by Jesus because they were supposed to have succeeded 
St. John at Ephesus. What the most learned and the most 
gifted of all the Fathers, Origen,* said of the promise to St. 
Peter in the sixteenth chapter of St. Matthew is at once the 
best proof of what was believed about it in early times, and also 
the best explanation of its application to later days : " He 
who is gifted with self-control enters the gate of heaven by 
the key of self-control. He who is just enters the gate of 
heaven by the key of justice. The Saviour gives to those who 
are not overcome by the gates of hell as many keys as there 
are virtues. Against him that judges unjustly, and does not 
bind on earth according to God's word, the gates of hell pre- 
vail ; but against whom the gates of hell do not prevail, he 
judges justly. If any who is not Peter, and has not the quali- 
ties here mentioned, believes that he can bind on earth like 



* Origen on Matt. xvi. 19. Comp. ibid. Be Orat. c. 28. An instructive col' 
lection of similar expressions from St. Augustine is given in an interesting 
dissertation on the ancient Making of Bishops, by the Rev. Dr. Harrison, vicar 
of Fenwick. 



ABSOLUTION. 123 

Peter, so that what he binds is bound in heaven, such an one 
is puffed up, not knowing the meaning of the Scriptures." 

That which is clear in the case of the promise to Peter is 
still more clear in the case of the promise in Matt, xviii. 18, 
and John xx. 23. It is obvious from the text in John xx. 23, 
that there is no special limitation to the Twelve. For at the 
meeting spoken of some of the Twelve were not there; 
Thomas was absent, Matthias was not yet elected, Paul and 
Barnabas were not yet called. And also others were there 
besides the Eleven, for in the corresponding passage in Luke 
xxiv. 36-47, it would appear (if we take the narratives in their 
literal meaning) that the two disciples from Emmaus, who 
were not apostles, were present, and the evangelist here, as 
throughout his whole Gospel, never uses any other word than 
"disciples." What is thus clear from the actual passage in 
John xx. 23, is yet more clear from the context of Matt, xviii. 
18. There, in the verses immediately preceding, phrase is 
heaped on phrase, and argument on argument, to show that 
the power of binding and loosing was addressed, not to any 
particular class within the circle of disciples, but to the whole 
body in its widest sense. Our Lord is there speaking of the 
forgiveness of offences. He requires the contending parties, 
if they cannot agree, to hear the Church — that is, the whole 
congregation or assembly ; to appeal, as it were, to the popu- 
lar instinct of the whole community ; and He goes on to say 
that, if even two agree on a matter of this kind, wherever two 
or three are gathered together in His name, there is He in the 
midst of them. These passages, in fact, form no exception to 
the universal rule of our Lord's discourses. Here, as elsewhere, 
as He said Himself, " What I say unto you, I say unto all." 
" Peter," as St. Augustine says, " represents all good men, and 
the promise in St. John is addressed to all believers every- 
where." " These words," says a living divine, " like the eyes 
of the Lord, look every way, and may include all forgiveness, 
whenever or wheresoever any sins are remitted through the 
agency of men." * They belong to the same class of precepts 
as " Let your loins be girded and your lights burning," " Ye 
are the salt of the earth," "Ye are the light of the world." 

* Pusey on Absolution, p. 33. 



124 CHRISTIAN INSTITUTIONS. 

All have a share in their meaning, all have a share in their 
force, in proportion as we have received from Heaven any por- 
tion of that inspiration whereby we seek " to do and to think 
the things that be good." * 

It was only when the minds of men had become confused 
by the introduction of limitations and alterations which had no 
connection with the original words that these promises and 
precepts began to change their meaning. The " Church," 
which once had meant the people, or the laity, came to mean 
the clergy. The declaration, "Ye are the light of the world," 
was understood to mean only those who were in holy orders. 
The promise to Peter came to be strangely confined to the 
Italian Prelates who lived on the banks of the Tiber. The 
words of St. John's Gospel, which had originally been intended 
to teach the mutual edification and independent insight into 
divine truth of all who were inspired by the Spirit of Christ, 
became limited to the second of the three orders of the Chris- 
tian ministry. But these are merely passing restrictions and 
mistakes. The general truth of the words themselves remains 
unshaken and still applicable to the general growth of Chris- 
tian truth. 

The practical lesson of the passages is that which has been 
already indicated — namely, that the enlightening, elevating 
power of the Christian conscience is not confined to any pro- 
fession or order, however sacred ; is exercised not in virtue of 
any hereditary or transmitted succession, but in virtue of the 
spiritual discernment, the insight into truth and character, 
which has been vouchsafed to all good men, to all Christians, 
in proportion to their goodness, and wisdom, and discernment. 
This, as Origen says, is the true power of the keys ; a power 
which may be exercised, and which is exercised, sometimes by 
the teaching of a faithful pastor, sometimes by the presence of 
an innocent child, sometimes by the example of a good mother, 
sometimes by the warning of a true friend, sometimes by the 
silent glance of just indignation, sometimes by the reading of 
a good book — above all, by the straightforward honesty of our 



* Even those early Christian writers who restrict these words to a particular 
act, restrict them to baptism; and baptism, according to the rules of the an- 
cient Church, can be performed by any one. 



ABSOLUTION. 125 

own individual consciences, whether in dealing with ourselves 
or others. 

It may be worth while here again to recall the obvious pro- 
cesses by which the amelioration of mankind has taken place. 
We see it clearly on the large scale of history. Effect of the 
Doubtless there have been long periods when the lait y- 
chief enlightenment of the world has come from the clergy. 
In most Protestant and in some Catholic and Greek Churches 
the clergy, as a class, perhaps still do more than any other 
single class of men to keep alive a sense of goodness and 
truth. But there has never been a time when the laity have 
not had their share in the guidance of the Church; and in 
proportion as Christian civilization has increased, in proportion 
as the clergy have done their duty in enlightening and teach- 
ing others, in that proportion the Christian influence, the 
binding and the loosing power of all good and gifted men, has 
increased — in that proportion has the principle implied in 
these passages received a deeper, wider signification. 

There have been ages when the clergy were coextensive with 
the educated class of mankind, and were thus the chief means 
of stimulating and purifying the moral standard of their age. 
But at all times, and specially since other professions have 
become " clerks," — that is, scholars and instructors, — the ad- 
vancement of learning, the opening of the gates of heaven, 
has been as much the work of the Christian Church — that is, 
of the laity — as of the priesthood. By the highest rank of 
the whole profession of the clergy — the Pontificate of Rome 
— the key of knowledge has been perhaps wielded less than by 
any other great institution in Christendom. Of the 256 prel- 
ates who have filled the bishopric of Rome, scarcely more than 
four have done anything by their writings to enlarge the boun- 
daries of knowledge and to raise the moral perceptions of man- 
kind — Leo the Great, Gregory the Great, and (in a higher 
degree) Benedict XIY. and Clement XIY. Occasional acts 
of toleration towards the Jews, the rectification of the calendar, 
and a few like examples of enlightenment may be adduced. 
But, as a general rule, whatever else the Popes have done, they 
have not, in the Biblical sense, bound or loosed the moral du- 
ties of mankind. 

And, again, as to the clergy generally, the abolition of slav- 



126 CHRISTIAN INSTITUTIONS. 

ery, though supported by many excellent ecclesiastics, yet had 
for its chief promoters the laymen Wilberforce and Clarkson, 
What these virtuous and gifted men bound on earth was bound 
in heaven, what they loosed on earth was loosed in heaven, not 
because they had or had not been set apart for a special office, 
but because they had received a large measure of the Holy 
Spirit of God, which enabled them to see the good and refuse 
the evil of the times in which they lived. 

If the aspirations of one half of mediaeval Christendom 
after goodness were guided by the clerical work of Thomas a 
Kempis, another half must have been no less elevated by the 
lay work of the divine poem of Dante. If the revelation of 
God in the universe was partly discovered by Copernicus the 
ecclesiastic, it was more fully disclosed by the labors of Galileo 
the layman, which the clergy condemned. If the religion of 
England has been fed in large part by Hooker, by Butler, by 
Wesley, and by Arnold, it has also been fed, perhaps in a yet 
larger part, by Milton, by Bunyan, by Addison, by Cowper, 
and by Walter Scott. 

If we study the process by which false notions of morality 
and religion have been dispersed, and true notions of morality 
and religion have been introduced, from Augustus to Charle- 
magne, from Charlemagne to Luther, from Luther to the pres- 
ent day (as unfolded in Mr. Lecky's four volumes), we shall 
find that the almost uniform law by which the sins and super- 
stitions of Christendom have been bound or loosed has been, 
first, that the action of some one conscience or some few con- 
sciences — whether of statesmen, students, priests, or soldiers — 
more enlightened, more Christ-like, than their fellows — has 
struck a new light, or unwound some old prejudice, or opened 
some new door into truth ; and then, that this light has been 
caught up, this opening has been widened by the gradual 
advance of Christian wisdom and knowledge in the mass. 

What is called the public opinion of any age may be in it- 
self as misleading, as corrupt, as the opinion of any individual. 
It must be touched, corrected, purified by those higher intelli- 
gences and nobler hearts, which catch the light as mountain 
summits before the sunrise has reached the plains. But it is 
only when the light has reached the plains, only when public 
opinion has become so elevated by the action of the few, that 



ABSOLUTION. 127 

Providence affixes its seal to the deed — that the binding or 
loosing is ratified in heaven. It is thus that Christian public 
opinion is formed ; and when it is formed, the sins, which 
before reigned with a tyrannical sway, fade away and disap- 
pear. 

Such, for example, was the drunkenness of the upper classes 
in the last century. It penetrated all the higher society of the 
land. But when by a few resolute wills, here and there, now 
and then, there was created a better and purer standard of 
morals in this respect, it perished as if by an invisible blow. 
The whole of educated society had placed it under their ban, 
and that ban was ratified in heaven — was ratified by the course 
of Providence. It is this same public opinion, which, if it can 
once be created in the humbler classes, will also be as powerful 
there. They also have, if they will, the same power of retain- 
ing, that is, of imprisoning, and condemning, and exterminat- 
ing this deadly enemy ; and by this means alone will it dis- 
appear from them as it has disappeared from the society of 
others who were once as completely slaves to it. 

So again, to pass to quite another form of evil, the violent 
personal scurrility that used once to disgrace our periodical 
literature. That, as a general rule, has almost entirely dis- 
appeared from the great leading journals of the day. On the 
whole they are temperately expressed, and conducted with 
reasonable fairness. The public has become too highly 
educated to endure the coarseness of former times. But 
in the more confined organs of opinion the old Adam still 
lingers. In some of those newspapers, which are called by 
a figure of speech our religious journals, the scurrility and 
personal intolerance which once penetrated the great secular 
journals still abide. That also, we may trust, will gradually 
vanish as the religious or ecclesiastical world becomes more 
penetrated with the true spirit of Christianity which has 
already taken possession of the lay world. 

III. It might be enough, for the purpose of this argument, 
to have pointed out the original meaning of the sacred words, 
and their correspondence to the actual facts of history. But 
the subject could not be completed without touching, however 
slightly, on the curious limitation and perversion of them 
which have taken place in later times. This has in great part 



128 CHRISTIAN INSTITUTIONS. 

arisen from their introduction into the liturgical forms by 
which in some Christian Churches some of the 
r ma ion. c ] er gy are appointed to their functions. The words 
from St. John's Gospel are not, nor ever have been, used to 
describe the consecration of Bishops or Archbishops.* They 
are not, nor ever have been, used in the ordination of Deacons 
— an order which, in the fourth century, exercised in some 
respects a power almost equal to that of the Episcopate, and 
in our own country has often been intrusted with the most 
important and exclusively pastoral functions — of instruction 
visiting, and preaching. Where used, they are only used 
in the ordination of Presbyters or (as in the abridged form 
they are unfortunately called) Priests. And even for this 
limited object the introduction of the words is comparatively 
recent, and probably the result of misconception. It is certain 
that for the first twelve centuries they were never used for the 
ordination of any Christian minister. It is certain that in the 
whole Eastern Church they are never used at all for this pur- 
pose. It was not till the thirteenth century — the age when the 
materialistic theories of the sacraments and the extravagant 
pretensions of pontifical and sacerdotal power were at their 
height — that they were first introduced into the Ordinals of 
the Latin Church. From thence they were, at the Reforma- 
tion, retained in the Ordination Service of the Episcopal 
Church of England, and of the Presbyterian Church of Luth- 
eran Germany, f 

The retention of these words in these two Churches may 
have been occasioned by various causes. It is clear that they 
have become a mere stumbling-block and stone of offence, 
partly as unintelligible, partly as giving rise to the most mis- 
taken conclusions. Their retention is confessedly not in con- 
formity, but in direct antagonism, with ancient and Catholic 

* In the English Office of Consecrating Bishops and Archbishops, the por- 
tion of the chapter which contains those words is one of the three alternative 
Gospels. But the fact that it is an alternative, and one rarely used, shows 
that it is not regarded as essential. They are also incorporated in a general 
prayer in the Consecration of Bishops first found in the Poitiers Ordinal, a.d. 
600, reprinted by Baronius and Martene. It is contained in the Roman Pon- 
tifical. 

t The whole antiquarian and critical side of the introduction of these words 
into the Latin and English Ordinal has been worked out with the utmost ex- 
actness and with the most searching inquiry by Archdeacon Reichel in the 
Quarterly Review of October, 1877, "Ordination and Confession." 



ABSOLUTION. 129 

usages. It is a mere copy of a mediaeval interpolation, which 
has hardly any more claim, on historical or theological grounds, 
to a place in the English or Lutheran Prayer Book than the 
admission of the existence of Pope Joan or of the miracle of 
Bolsena. And, so far from these words being regarded as a 
necessary part of the validity of Holy Orders, such an asser- 
tion, if admitted, would of itself be fatal to the validity of all 
Holy Orders whatever ; for it would prove that every single 
ordination for the first twelve hundred years of Christianity 
was invalid, nay, more, that every present ordination in the 
Roman Church itself was invalid, inasmuch as in the Ordinal 
itself these words do not occur in the essential parts of the 
office, but only in an accidental adjunct of it. 

IV. But further, the phrase indicates, even in reference to 
the subject of Confession and Absolution, with 
which it has no direct connection, the fundamental andASolu- 
truth which is incompatible with the exclusive pos- tion. 
session of this privilege by the clergy. 

For the principle of the texts, as we have seen, teaches us 
that we all have to bear each other's burden. There is no 
caste or order of men who can relieve us of this dread 
responsibility, of this noble privilege. The clergyman needs 
the advice and pardon of the gifted layman quite as much as 
the layman seeks the advice and pardon of the gifted clergy- 
man. The brother seeks the forgiveness of the brother whom 
he hath offended ; the child of the parent ; the neighbor of the 
neighbor. This in the earliest times was the real meaning of 
Confession. " Confess your faults," says St. James — to whom? 
To the elders of the Church whom had he just mentioned? 
To the Bishop, or the Priest, or the Deacon ? No. " Confess 
your faults one to another." It is as though he said, " Let 
there be mutual confidence." Every one can do his neighbor 
some good ; every one can protest against some evil ; and the 
whole tone of the community shall thus be raised. 

The full sympathy which thus prevailed amongst the mem- 
bers of the infant Church no doubt soon died away. But its 
semblance was long continued in the only form of confession 
that was known for four centuries, namely, the acknowledg- 
ment of the faults of the penitent, not in private, but in public, 
to the whole congregation, who then publicly expressed their 

6* 



130 CHRISTIAN INSTITUTIONS. 

forgiveness. The substitution of a single priest for a large 
congregation as the receptacle of confession arose from the 
desire of avoiding the scandals occasioned by the primitive 
publicity. It was not till long afterwards that the notion 
sprang up of any special virtue attaching to the forgiveness of 
a clergyman, or that any private or special confession was 
made to him. Even in the very heart of the Roman Mass is 
retained a testimony to the independence and equality in this 
respect of people and minister. There, in the most solemn 
ordinance of religion, the priest first turns to the people and 
confesses his sins to them, and they publicly absolve him, in 
exactly the same form of words as he uses when they in their 
turn publicly confess their faults to him.* This striking 
passage, standing as it does in the forefront of the Roman 
Missal, is one of the many variations in the Roman Church 
which, if followed out to its logical consequences, would 
correct some of the gravest errors which have sprung up with- 
in its pale. It has probably escaped attention from the dead 
language and the inaudible manner in which it is repeated. 
But it is not the less significant in itself; and had it been 
transferred to the English Prayer Book, where the vitality of 
the language and the more audible mode of reading the service 
would have brought it into prominence, it would have more 
than counterbalanced those two or three ambiguous passages 
on the subject which the Reformers left in the Liturgy. 

There is a story told of James I., who when, after indulging 
in a furious passion against a faithful servant,f he found that 
it was under a mistake, sent for him immediately, would 
neither eat, drink, nor sleep till he saw him, and when the 



* The Priest says, "Confiteor Deo Omnipotenti, Beatae Marise semper Vir- 
gini," etc., "et vobis, fratres, quia peccavi nimis cogitatione, verbo, et opere, 
mea culpa, mea culpa, raea maxima culpa. Ideo precor beatam Mariam 
semper Virginem," etc., "et vos, fratres, orare pro me ad Dominum Deum 
nostrum." The attendants reply, "Misereatur tui Omnipotens Deus, et, 
dimissis peccatis tuis, perducat te ad vitam aeternam." The Priest says 
Amen, and stands up. Then the attendants repeat the confession, only 
changing the words "vobis, fratres" and "vos fratres" into "tibi, pater" 
and "te, pater," and the Priest replies in like words. Finally the Priest, 
signing himself with the sign of the cross, says, " Indulgentiam, absolu- 
tionem et remissionem peccatorum nostrorum tribuet nobis Omnipotens et 
Misencors Dominus;" which is evidently a joint absolution for both himself 
and the people. The form "Ego absolvo te" is, as before observed, of a 
much later date. 

+ Aikin, Life of James I. (ii. 402). 



ABSOLUTION. 131 

servant entered his chamber the King kneeled down and 
begged his pardon ; nor would he rise from his humble 
posture till he had compelled the astonished servant to pro- 
nounce the words of absolution. That was a grotesque but 
genuine form of penitence ; that was a grotesque but legiti- 
mate form of absolution. There was a story told during the 
Turkish war of 1877, that a Roumanian soldier, after having 
received the sacraments from a priest on his death-bed, would 
not be satisfied till he had obtained an interview with the 
excellent Princess of Roumania. To her he explained that 
he had tried to escape from the dangers of the battle by muti- 
lating one of his fingers ; and against her and her husband, 
the Prince of Roumania, he felt that this offence had been 
committed. From the Princess, and not from the priest, he 
felt must the forgiveness come which alone could bring any 
comfort to him. That forgiveness was whispered into the 
dying man's ear by the Princess ; with that forgiveness, not 
sacerdotal, but truly human, and therefore truly divine, the 
penitent soldier passed in peace to his rest.* In fact, the 
moment that we admit the efficacy of repentance, we deny the 
necessity of any special absolution. An incantation, of which 
the virtue rests in the words pronounced, ~ls equally valid 
whether the person over whom it is pronounced is guilty or 
innocent, conscious or unconscious. But the moment that the 
moral condition of the recipient is acknowledged as a necessary 
element, that of itself becomes the chief part, and the repeti- 
tion of certain words may be edifying, but is not essential. 
The welfare of the hearer's soul depends not on any external 
absolution, but on its own intrinsic state. The value of any 
absolution or forgiveness depends not on the external condition 
of the man who pronounces it, but on the intrinsic truth of 
the forgiveness. 

Not long ago, when a French ship foundered in the 
Atlantic, a brave French priest was overheard repeating the 
absolution in the last moments of life to a fellow-countrymen. 
All honor to him for the gallant discharge of what he believed 
to be his duty! But is there a single reflecting man, whether 
Catholic or Protestant, who would not feel that the interven- 

* The Times, Nov. 2, 1877. 



132 CHRISTIAN INSTITUTIONS. 

tion of a priest at that moment was in itself absolutely 
indifferent? At all times the Bible and the enlightened 
conscience repeatedly assure us that that which commends 
a departing spirit to its Creator and Judge is not the accidental 
circumstance of his listening to a particular form of words 
uttered by a particular person, but the sincerity of repentance, 
the uprightness, the humility, the purity, the faithfulness of 
the man himself. 

It may be a consolation to us to hear from well-known lips 
which speak to us with tenderness, with knowledge, and with 
justice, the assurance that we are regarded as innocent : it 
may be a consolation to hear with our outward ears the 
solemn declarations that the Supreme Father is always ready to 
receive the returning penitent; that the soul which returns 
from evil and does what is lawful and right shall surely live. 
But this assurance, by the nature of the case, is well known to 
us already from hundreds of passages in the Bible, and from 
the knowledge of human nature. And also it can come from 
any one whom we respect, from any one whom we may have 
injured, from any one who will give us a true, disinterested 
verdict on our worse and on our better qualities. It is finely 
described in a well-known tale — " The Heir of Redclyffe " — 
that when the obstinate Pharisaical youth, at last, in bitter 
remorse acknowledges his fault to the wife of the man whom 
he has mortally injured, she takes upon herself to console him 
and absolve him, and her absolution consists in repeating the 
words of the Psalmist: "The sacrifices of God are a troubled 
spirit ; a broken and a contrite heart, O God, wilt Thou not 
despise." No Pontifical decree could say more ; no true for- 
giveness could say less. Whenever any man is able to see 
clearly that his fellow-man has truly repented, or that a course 
of action is clear and right — then, whoever he be, he can 
declare that promise of God's forgiveness. In all cases each 
man must strive to act on his own judgment and on his own 
conscience. The first duty of the penitent is to try to mini- 
ster to his own disease. " The heart knoweth his own bitter- 
ness, and a stranger doth not intermeddle with his joy." 

Why should we faint or fear to live alone, 
Since all alone, so Heav'n has will'd, we die? 

The next duty may be to get sound advice on his future 



ABSOLUTION. 133 

course. But that advice can be given by any competent 
person > and the competency depends not on any minis- 
terial or sacerdotal character, but on personal insight into 
character to be found equally in layman and clergyman. 

It is a duty to cultivate the conviction that we all alike need 
to be guided and be forgiven, and to have our course made 
clear. . All alike, according to the several gifts which God has 
bestowed on the vast family of mankind, have the power to 
forgive, to assist, to enlighten each other. In the last resort 
there is no one to be considered or regarded, but our own im- 
mortal struggling souls and the One eternally Just and Merci- 
ful God. Our own responsibility must be maintained without 
shifting it to the keeping of any one else. We, all of us, each 
with some different gift, are the inheritors of the promise to 
bind and to loose — that is, to warn and to console our breth- 
ren, as we in like manner hope to be warned and consoled by 
them. 

V. Such is the summary of this question needlessly compli- 
cated by irrelevant discussions. The texts on which the popu- 
lar theory and practice of absolution are grounded its true 
are, as we have seen, altogether beside the purpose, meaning. 
They no more relate to it than the promise to Peter relates to 
the Popes of Rome, or than Isaiah's description of the ruin of 
the Assyrian King under the figure of Lucifer relates to the 
Fall of the Angels, or than the two swords at the Last Supper 
relate to the spiritual and secular jurisdiction, or than the sun 
and moon in the first chapter of Genesis relate to the Pope 
and the Emperor. In all these cases, the misinterpretation has 
been long and persistent ; in all these, it is acknowledged by all 
scholars, outside the Roman communion, that they are abso- 
lutely without foundation. 

And, as the misinterpretation of the texts on which the 
theory of Episcopal or Presbyterian absolution rests will die 
out before a sound understanding of the Biblical records, so 
also the theory and practice itself, though with occasional re- 
crudescences, will probably die out with the advance of civil- 
ization. The true power of the clergy will not be diminished 
but strengthened by the loss of this fictitious attribute. Noma 
of the Fitful Head was a happier and more useful member of 
society after she abandoned her magical arts than when she 



134 CHRISTIAN INSTITUTIONS. 

practised them. In proportion as England has become, and in 
proportion as it will yet more become, a truly free and truly- 
educated people, able of itself to bind what ought to be bound, 
and to loose what ought to be loosed, in that proportion will 
the belief in priestly absolution vanish, just as the belief in 
wizards and necromancers has vanished before the advance of 
science. As alchemy has disappeared to give place to.chemis- 
try, as astrology has given way to astronomy, as monastic 
celibacy has given way to domestic purity, as bull-fights and 
bear-baits have given way to innocent and elevating amuse- 
ments, as scholastic casuistry has bowed before the philosophy 
of Bacon and Pascal, so will the belief in the magical offices 
of a sacerdotal caste vanish before the growth of manly Chris- 
tian independence and generous Christian sympathy. 



ECCLESIASTICAL VESTMENTS. 135 



CHAPTER VIII. 

ECCLESIASTICAL VESTMENTS. 

At a time when all Churches are or ought to be occupied 
with so many important questions, when so many interesting 
inquiries have arisen with regard to the origin and the inter- 
pretation of the Sacred Books, when the adjustment of science 
and theology needs more than ever to be properly balanced, 
when the framework of the English Prayer Book requires so 
many changes and expansions in order to meet the wants of 
the time, when measures for the conciliation of our Noncon- 
formist brethren press so closely on the hearts and consciences 
of those who care for peace and truth, when so many social 
and political problems are crying for solution, some apology is 
due for treating of a subject so apparently trival as the Vest- 
ments of the Clergy. But, inasmuch as it has nevertheless 
occupied considerable attention in the English Church, its dis- 
cussion cannot be altogether out of place. 

What has to be said will be divided into two parts: the 
first, an antiquarian investigation into the origin of ecclesias- 
tical vestments; the second, some practical remarks on the 
present state of the controversy in England. 

I. The antiquarian investigation of this matter is not in 
itself devoid of interest. It belongs to the general survey of 
the origin of usages and customs in the early ages of Chris- 
tianity. The conclusion to which it leads is that the dress of 
the clergy had no distinct intention — symbolical, sacerdotal, 
sacrificial, or mystical ; but originated simply in the fashions 
common to the whole community of the Roman Empire during 
the three first centuries. 

There is nothing new to be said in favor of this conclusion. 
But it has nevertheless been, and is still, persistently denied. 
In spite of the assertion to the contrary of Cardinal Bona, 
Pere Thomassin, Dr. Rock, and our own lamented Wharton 
Marriott, it has been asserted, both by the admirers and de- 



136 CBHISTIAN INSTITUTIONS. 

predators of clerical vestments, that they were borrowed in 
the first instance (to use Milton's phrase in his splendid invec- 
tive against the English clergy) " from Aaron's wardrobe or the 
Flamen's vestry ;" that they are intrinsically marks of distinc- 
tion between the clergy and the laity, between the Eucharist 
and every other religious service, between a sacerdotal and an 
anti-sacerdotal view of the Christian ministry — that if they 
are abolished, all is lost to the idea of a Christian priesthood ; 
that if they are retained, all is gained. 

In" face then of these reiterated statements, it may not be 
out of place to prove that every one of them is not only not 
true, but is the reverse of the truth ; that if they symbolize 
anything, they symbolize ideas the contrary of those now as- 
cribed to them. 

IT. Let us, in our mind's eye, dress up a lay figure at the 
time of the Christian era, when the same general costume per- 
f th va( ^ed a ^ classes of the Roman Empire, from Pales- 
ancient tine to Spain, very much as the costume of the 
world. nineteenth century pervades at least all the upper 

classes of Europe now. 

The Roman,* Greek, or Syrian, whether gentleman or 
peasant, unless in exceptional cases, had no hat, no coat, no 
waistcoat, and no trousers. He had shoes or sandals ; he wore 
next his skin, first, a shirt or jacket, double or single; then a 
long shawl or plaid; and again, especially in the later Roman 
period, a cloak or overcoat. f 

1. The first, or inner garb, if we strip the ancient Roman to 

his shirt, was what is called in classical Greek, chiton ; in clas- 

T , sical Latin, tunica; a woollen vest, which some- 

times had beneath it another fitting close to the skin, 

- A called subucula or interula, or, in the case of soldiers, camisia.\ 

* As the vestments in question are chiefly those of the Latin Church, these 
remarks apply more to the dress of the Western than of the Eastern popula- 
tion of the Empire. But in general (as appears even from the New Testa- 
ment alone, without referring to secular authorities) the dress even of the 
Syrian peasants was substantially the same as that of the Greek or the 
Roman. 

t For the general dress, see, for the Greek, Bekker's Charicles, pp. 402-20; 
for the Roman, Bekker's Gallus, pp. 401-30; for the Syrian, Smith's Diction- 
ary of the Bible, under Dress; for the ecclesiastical dresses, Smith's Diction- 
ary of Christian Antiquities, under the different words. 

% St. Jerome, Epist. 64, ad Fabiolam. He apologizes for using so vulgar a 
word as camisia. 



ECCLESIASTICAL VESTMENTS. 137 

It is this name of camisia which, under the name of chemise, 
has gradually superseded the others, and which has been per- 
petuated in ecclesiastical phraseology under another synonyme 
derived from it* white color (for shirts, with the ancients as 
with the moderns, were usually white) , and hence it came to 
be called an alb. 

This is the dress which became appropriated specially to 
the Deacon. He, as the working-man of the clergy, officiated, 
as it were, in his shirt sleeves. 

But as the homeliest garments are subject to the varieties of 
fashion, the shirt, the chemise, the camisia, whether of Pagan 
or Christian, had two forms.* The simpler or more ancient 
was an under-shirt with short sleeves, or rather with no sleeves 
at all, called in Greek \ exomis, in Latin colobium. The more 
costly form may be compared to the shirt of Charles II., 
with fine ruffles. It was called the Dalmatica, from its birth- 
place Dalmatia — in the same way as the cravats of the French 
in the seventeenth century were called Steinkerks from the 
battle of that name ; or the Ulsters of the present day from 
the northern province of Ireland. The first J persons recorded 
to have worn it are the infamous Emperors Commodus and 
Heliogabalus. It was thought an outrage on all propriety 
when Heliogabalus appeared publicly in this dress in the streets 
after dinner, calling himself a second Fabius or Scipio, because 
it was the sort of frock which the Cornelii or Fabii were wont 
to wear in their childhood when they were naughty boys. It 
was as if some English magnate were to walk up St. James's 
Street in his dressing-gown. But the fashion spread rapidly, 
and thirty years afterwards appears as the dress of Cyprian, 
Bishop of Carthage, when led out to death — not, however, in 
that instance as his outer garment. It became fixed as the 
name of the dress of the deacon after the time of Constantine, 
when it superseded the original colobium ; and although it 
quickly spread to the other orders, it is evident 'that it 
was, for the reasons above given, particularly suitable to the 
inferior clergy, who, as having nothing over it, would seem to 



* Bona 1, 14; Thomassin, Vetus et Nova Disciplina, ii. 2, 49. That in Greece 
there was generally an under shirt and an outer shirt is proved in Charicles, 
p. 406. 

t Charicles, 415. $ Bingham, vi. 4 19. 



^ 



138 CHRISTIAN INSTITUTIONS. 

require a more elaborate shirt. This was the first element of 
/ ecclesiastical vestments, as deacons were the first elements of a 
Christian ministry. 

In later times, after the invasion of the Northern barbarians, 
this shirt, which must, perhaps, always have been worn over 
some thicker garment next the skin, was drawn over the fur 
coat, sheepskin, or otter skin, the pellisse of the Northern 
nations; and hence in the twelfth century arose the barbarous 
name of super -pellicium, or surplice — the overfur. Its name 
indicates that it is the latest of ecclesiastical vestments, and 
though, like all the others, generally worn * both by clergy and 
laity, in-doors and out-of-doors, is the most remote in descent 
from primitive times. Another form of this dress — also, as its 
German name implies, dating from the invasion of the barbari- 
ans — was the rochet or rocket, "the little rock" or "coat" 
worn by the mediaeval bishops out-of-doors on all occasions, 
except when they went out hunting; and which now is to them 
what the surplice is to presbyters. The lawn sleeves \ are 
merely an addition to make up for the long-flowing sleeves of 
the surplice. 

But in both cases the fur coat within was the usual dress, of 
which the overfur was, as it were, merely the mask. Charle- 
magne in winter wore an otter-skin breastplate \ and hunted 
in sheepskin. The butcher of Rouen, who was saved alone out 
of the crew of the Blanche JVef, wore a sheepskin. St. Martin, 
Apostle of the Gauls, and the first Bishop of Tours, when he 
officiated wore also a sheepskin — a fur coat (as it would seem 
with no surplice over it, and with no sleeves), and consecrated 
the Eucharistic elements with his bare arms, which came 
through the sheepskin like those of the sturdy deacons who 
had brandished their sinewy arms out of the holes of their 
colobium. 

2. The second part of the dress was a shawl or blanket, 

wrapt round the shoulders over the shirt, in Greek himation, 

The shawl m ^atin t°9 a , or pallium. This also was usually 

white as the common color of the ancient dress, 

which is still perpetuated in the white flannel robe of the Pope, 



* Thomassin, ii. 2, 48. t Hody, On Convocation, 

t Thomassin, ii. 2, c. 48, 69. 



ECCLESIASTICAL VESTMENTS. 139 

but marked with a broad purple stripe. This is what appears, 
in the early portion of the fourth century, as the dress equally 
of ecclesiastics and laity. After the fourth century the Chris- 
tians affected the use of black shawls (like the Geneva divines 
of the sixteenth century), in order to imitate the philosophers 
and ascetics. Of the general adoption of the black dress, an 
interesting illustration is given in the case of the Bishop Sisin- 
nius, who ciiose to wear white, and when he was asked what 
command in Scripture he found for his white surplice, replied, 
" What command is there for wearing black ?" * For reasons 
which will appear immediately, there are fewer traces of this 
part of the ancient dress than of any other in the vestments of 
the clergy. The only relic of the Roman toga or pallium 
remains in the pall of an Archbishop, which is only the string 
which held it together, or the broad stripe which marked its 
surface. 

3. The third part of the ancient dress, and that from which 
the larger part of the ecclesiastical vestments are derived, was 
the overcoat, in Latin lacerna or pcenula, in Greek The over- 
phcelone. It ought perhaps to have been worn over coat - 
the toga, but was sometimes for convenience worn instead 
of it, and at last, after the discontinuance of the toga,\ — 
which for practical purposes came to be much like our 
evening dress coat, and was thus, after the Empire, only 
worn on official occasions, — the overcoat came to be the usual 
dress as frock coats, shooting coats, and the like are worn in 
general morning society in England. What had once been 
regarded only as a rough soldier's garb, unsuitable within the 
city, came to be worn everywhere. It was for the most part 
like a poncho, or cape, or burnous,^ but it consisted of several 
varieties. 

There was the birrhus, or scarlet cloak, worn by Athanasius, 
as a wealthy person, when he visited the mysterious lady§ in 
Alexandria, but not thought by Augustine suitable to his 
poverty. There was the caracalla, a long overall, brought by 
Antoninus Bassianus from France, whence he derived his name 



* Bingham, vi. 4, 19; Socrates, vi. 20; Thomassin, i. 3-34. 

+ Marriott, Vestiarium, p. xii. 

X So it is translated in the Coptic Liturgy. 

§ Marriott, pp. M. 16. 



140 CHRISTIAN INSTITUTIONS. 

— and it was this which was corrupted into casacalla, casaca, 
and finally cassock. It had a hood, and was called in Greek 
amphibalus, and as such appears in the account of the perse- 
cution of St. Alban,* where, by a strange confusion, the name 
of Amphibalus has been supposed to represent the name of 
a saint. The word cassock, although highly esteemed, has 
never reached so high a pitch of reverence. 

The same form of dress was also called casula, a«slang name 
used by the Italian laborers f for the capote, which they called 
" their little house," as " tile " is — or was a short time ago — 
used for a " hat," and as " coat" is the same word as " cote," 
or " cottage." It is this which took the name of chasuble, 
and was afterwards especially known as the out-door garment 
of the clergy, as the sagum was of the laity, and was not 
adopted as a vestment for sacred services before the ninth 
century. Another name by which it was called was planeta, 
" the wanderer," because it wandered loosely over the body, 
as one of these overcoats in our day has been called " zephyr." 
This was the common overcoat of the wealthier, as the casula 
of the humbler classes. 

Another form of overcoat was the capa, or copa, "the 
hood " — also called the pluviale,\ or " waterproof," to be worn 
in rainy weather out-of-doors. It was this cape, or cope, that 
St. Martin divided with the beggar at the gates of Amiens, 
/ and hence (according to one derivation of the word) the 
l capella, or chapel, where the fragment of his cape was pre- 
served. It is the vestment of which the secular use has long- 
est retained its hold, having been worn by Bishops in Parlia- 
ment, by Canons at coronations, and by lay vicars, almsmen, 
and the like, on other similar occasions, till quite recently. 

Another form of the same garb, though of a lighter tex- 
ture, and chiefly used by ladies in riding, was the cymar, or 
chimere,% of which the trace still lingers in the bishop's satin 
robe, which so vexed the soul of Bishop Hooper, and which 
had to be forced on him almost at the point of the sword — 
but which now apparently is cast || aside by advocates of the 
modern use of clerical vestments. 

* Bede, H. E. i. 6. 

t Columella, Isidore, Augustine; see Marriott, pp. 228, 202. 

X Marriott, p. 229. § Archceologia, xxx. 27. 

i See the recent account of the installation of the Bishop of Capetown, 



ECCLESIASTICAL VESTMENTS. 141 

The mitre, as worn in the Eastern Church, may still be seen 
in the museums of Russia, as the caps or turbans, worn ou 
festive occasions in ancient days by princes and nobles, and 
even to this day by the peasant women. The division into 
two points, which appears in Western mitres, is only the 
mark of the crease which is the consequence of its having 
been, like an opera hat, folded and carried under the arm. 

The stole * (which, in Greek, is simply another word for the 
overcoat, or pcenula) in the ninth century came to be used for 
the " orarium." This was a simple handkerchief for blowing 
the nose, or wiping off the sweat from the face. These 
handkerchiefs, on state occasions, were used as ribbons, 
streamers, or scarfs ; and hence their adoption by the deacons, 
who had little else to distinguish them. When Sir James 
Brooke first returned from Borneo, where the only sign of 
royalty was to hold a kerchief in the hand, he retained the 
practice in England. 

III. Before we pass to any practical application, it may be 
remarked that this historical inquiry has a twofold interest. 
First, the condition of the early Church, which is Their secu- 
indicated in this matter of dress, is but one of a lar origin- 
hundred similar examples of the secular and social origin of 
many usages which are now regarded as purely ecclesiastical, 
and yet more, of the close connection, or rather identity, of 
common and religious, of lay and clerical life, which it has 
been the effort of fifteen centuries to rend asunder. One of 
the treasures f which King Edward III. presented to West- 
minster Abbey, were " the vestments in which St. Peter was 
wont to celebrate mass." What those mediaeval relics were 
we know not, but what the actual vestment of St. Peter was 
we know perfectly well — it was a "fisher's coat J cast about 
his naked body." In like manner, the Church of Rome itself 
is not so far wrong when it exhibits in St. John Lateran, the 



* Thomassin, 8, 245. He is perplexed, and justly, by the difficulty of under- 
standing how the "sfoZa," which was the word for the whole dress, should 
have been appropriated to such a small matter as the handkerchief. An ex- 
planation is attempted in Marriott, pp. 75, 84, 90, 112, 115, lxiii. 

t Adam de Murimuth, Harl. MS. 565, vol. 206. 

X In like manner the only mention of St. Paul's vestments is the allusion to 
his cloak— the phoelone— described in p. 139. The casual notice of itself pre- 
cludes the notion of a sacred vestment. 2 Tim. iv. 13. 



142 CHRISTIAN INSTITUTIONS. 

altar at which St. Peter fulfilled — if he ever did fulfil — the 
same functions. It is not a stone or marble monument, but 
a rough wooden table, such as would have been used at any 
common meal. And the churches in which, we do not say 
St. Peter, for there were no churches in his time, but in 
which the Bishops of the third and fourth centuries officiated, 
are not copies of Jewish or Pagan temples, but of town-halls 
and courts of justice. And the. posture in which they offici- 
ated was not that of the modern Roman priest, with his back 
to the people, but that of the ancient Roman praetor,* facing 
the people — for whose sake he was there. And the Latin 
language, now regarded as consecrated to religious purposes, 
was but the vulgar dialect of the Italian peasants. And the 
Eucharist itself was the daily social meal, in which the only 
sacrifice offered was the natural thanksgiving, offered not by 
the presiding minister, but by all those who brought their 
contributions from the kindly fruits of the earth. 

We do not deny that in those early ages there were many 
magical and mystical notions afloat. In a society where the 
whole atmosphere was still redolent of strange rites, of Pagan 
witchcraft and demonology, there is quite enough to make us 
rejoice that even the mediaeval Church had, in some respects, 
made a great advance on the Church of the first ages. What 
we maintain is, that in the matter of vestments, as in many 
other respects, the primitive Church was not infected by these 
superstitions, and is a witness against them. They are incon- 
trovertible proofs that there was a large mass of sentiment and 
of usage, which was not only not mediaeval, not hierarchical, 
but the very reverse ; a mine of Protestantism — of Quakerism 
if we will — which remained there to explode, when the time 
came, into the European Reformation. They coincide with 
the fact which Bishop Lightfoot has proved in his unanswer- 
able Essay,f that the idea of a separate clerical priesthood 
was unknown to the early Church. They remain in the 
ancient Roman ritual, with other well-known discordant ele- 
ments, a living protest against the modern theories which have 
been engrafted upon it. 



* See the chapters on the Basilica and on the Pope. 

t Bishop Lightfoot's Commentary on the Philippians, pp. 247-66. 



ECCLESIASTICAL VESTMENTS. 143 

Secondly, there is the interest of following out the trans- 
formation of these names and garments. How early the 
transition from secular to sacred use took place, it Their trans- 
is difficult to determine ; but it was gradually, and formation, 
by unequal steps. It is said \ that even to the ninth century 
there were Eastern clergy who celebrated the Eucharist in 
their common costume. In the original Benedictine rule the 
conventual dress was so well understood to be merely the 
ordinary dress of the neighboring peasants, that in the 
sketches of early monastic life at Monte Casino the monks 
are represented in blue, green, or black, with absolute indiffer- 
ence. But now the distinction between the lay and clerical 
dress, which once existed nowhere, has become universal. It 
is not confined to ancient or to Episcopal Churches. It is 
found in the Churches of Presbyterians and Nonconformists. 
The extreme simplicity of the utmost " dissidence of Dis- 
sent" has, in this respect, departed further from primitive 
practice than it has from any Pontifical or ritual splendor. 
A distinguished Baptist minister, one of the most popular 
preachers, and one of the most powerful ecclesiastics in Lon- 
don, was shocked to find that he could not preach in Calvin's 
church at Geneva without adopting the gown, and naturally 
refused to wear it except under protest. But even he, in his 
London Tabernacle, had already fallen away from the primi- 
tive simplicity which acknowledged no difference of dress 
between the clergy and the laity, — for he as well as all other 
ministers (it is believed) has adopted the black dress which no 
layman would think of using except as an evening costume. 
The clergy of the Church of England have either adopted 
the white surplice, once the common frock, drawn, as it has 
been seen, over the fur of our skin-clad ancestors, or else 
have, in a few instances, retained or restored the shreds and 
patches of the clothes worn by Roman nobles and laborers. 
The Roman clergy have done the same, but in a more elabo- 
rate form. 

In all, the process has been alike. First the early Christians, 
not the clergy only but the laity as well, when they came to 
their public assemblies, wore indeed their ordinary clothes, but 

* Marriott, p. lvii. 



144 CHBISTIAN INSTITUTIONS. 

took care that they should be clean. The Pelagians,* and the 
more ascetic clergy, insisted on coming in rags, but this was 
contrary to the more moderate and more general sentiment. 

Next, it was natural that the colors and forms chosen for 
their Sunday clothes should be of a more grave and sober tint, 
as that of the Quakers in Charles the Second's time. "As 
there is a garb proper for soldiers, sailors, and magistrates,! 
so," says Clement of Alexandria, " there is a garb befitting the 
sobriety of Christians." 

Then came the process which belongs to all society in every 
age and which we see actually going on before our eyes — 
namely, that what in ordinary life is liable to the rapid transi- 
tions of fashion, in certain classes becomes fixed at a particular 
moment ; and then — though again in its turn undergoing new 
changes of fashion, yet retains something of its old form or 
name ; and finally engenders in fanciful minds fanciful reflec- 
tions as far as possible removed from the original meaning of 
these garments. 

Take for example the wigs of Bishops. First, there was the 
long flowing hair of the Cavaliers. Then when this was cut 
short came the long flowing wigs in their places. Then these 
were dropped except by the learned professions. Then they 
were dropped by the lawyers except in court. Then the clergy 
laid them aside, with the exception of the bishops. Then the 
bishops laid them aside with the exception of the archbishops. 
Then the last archbishop laid his wig aside except on official 
occasions. And now even the archbishop has dropped it. 
But it is easy to see that, had it been retained, it might 
have passed like the pall into the mystic symbol of the 
archiepiscopate, patriarchate, or we know not what. Bands 
again sprang from the broad \ white collars, which fell over the 
shoulders of the higher and middle classes — whether Cavalier 
or Puritan — Cromwell and Bunyan, no less than Clarendon and 
Hammond. Then these were confined to the clergy; then 
reduced to a single white plait ; then divided into two parts ; 
then symbolized to mean the two tables of the law, the two 
sacraments, or the cloven tongues ; then, from a supposed con- 



* Thomassin, i. 2, 43. ' t Marriott, p. xxv. 

X In the Lutheran Church the same fate has befallen the ruff. 



ECCLESIASTICAL VESTMENTS. 145 

nection with Puritanism, or from a sense of inconvenience, 
ceased to be worn, or worn only by the more old-fashioned of 
the clergy; so as to be regarded by the younger generation as 
a symbol of Puritan custom or doctrine. Just so, and with as 
much reason, did the surplice in the Middle Ages, from its 
position as a frock or pinafore over the fur coat, come to be 
regarded as an emblem of imputed righteousness over the skins 
in which were clothed our first parents ; just so did the turban 
or mitra when divided by its crease come to be regarded as 
the cloven tongue ; just so did the handkerchief with which 
the Roman gentry wiped their faces come to be regarded in 
the fifth century as wings of angels, and in the seventh as the 
yoke of Christian life. Just so have the ponchos and water- 
proofs of the Roman peasants and laborers come in the nine- 
teenth century to be regarded as emblems of Sacrifice, Priest- 
hood, Real Presence, communion with the universal Church, 
Christian or ecclesiastical virtues. 

It is hardly necessary to answer detailed objections to a 
statement of which the general truth is acknowledged by all 
the chief authorities on the subject, as well as confirmed by 
the general analogy of the origin of the Christian usages. In 
fact, the Roman Church has at times even gloried in the secular 
origin of its sacred vestments, and based their adoption on the 
grant by Constantine (in his forged donation) of his own 
imperial garments to the Pope, and has then added that they 
were occasionally transferred back to the secular princes, — as 
when Alexander II. granted to the Duke of Bohemia the use 
of the mitre, and Alexander III. to the Doge of Venice the 
use of an umbrella like his own, — and that the Emperor wore 
the same pall or mantle that was used by Popes in the most 
sacred offices.* 

The only indications adduced to the contrary are : 
1. The golden plate said to have been worn by St. John and 
St. James. But even if Bishop Lightfoot had not amply f 
proved that this is a mere metaphor, it would not avail, for a 
golden plate has never been adopted as part of the ecclesiasti- 
cal ornaments. 



* Thomassin, i. 2, c. 45, s. 52. 

t Commentary on the Epistle to the Philippians, p. 

7 



146 CHRISTIAN INSTITUTIONS. 

2. The mention in the Clementine Liturgy that the bishop 
at a certain moment of the service puts on a white * garment. 
But this is an exception which proves the rule. Of all the 
liturgies, this is the only one which has any indication of dress 
— and the Clementine Liturgy is so saturated with interpola- 
tions of all kinds, some even heretical, that its text cannot be 
seriously used as an authentic witness. 

3. Jerome, in his Commentary on Ezekiel (c. 44), says that 
" Divine religion has one habit in service, another in use in 
common life." But he is speaking here of the trousers of the 
Jewish priests; and in all the allegorical interpretations he 
gives here, or in his letter to Fabiola, of the garments of the 
Jewish priesthood, there is not one which points to the sacer- 
dotal character of the Christian ministry ; and in this very 
passage, shortly before, he says, " Thus we learn that we ought 
not to enter the Holy of Holies with any sort of every-day 
clothing soiled from the use of life, but handle the Lord's 
sacraments with a clean conscience and clean clothes" It is 
evident that, so far as this is not metaphorical, it means only 
that (according to the description of the first stage of the 
process of adaptation given above) the clothes of Christians in 
public worship should not be dirty, but clean. 

There may possibly be other apparent exceptions, as, no 
doubt, in later Roman writers there are contradictory state- 
ments. But the general current of practice and opinion dur- 
ing the early ages is that which is well summed up by the 
Jesuit Sirmondus,f as by our own Bingham : " The color and 
form of dress was in the beginning the same for ecclesiastics 
and laymen." 

Should there be any counter-statements or counter-facts 
scattered here and there through the ancient customs or liter- 
ature of the Latin Church, it is no more than is to be expected 
from the heterogeneous forms which any large historical sys- 
tem embraces within itself. 

IV. We now proceed to the practical remarks which this 
part suggests. 

1. First, it is not useless to show that the significance of 

* Aaixnpav eaOrira, as in the next quotation from Jerome, probably means 
"clean, white gown." 
t See Marriott, p. 43; Thomassin, 1. 2, 43, 



ECCLESIASTICAL VESTMENTS. 147 

these dresses as alleged, both in attack and defence, rests on 
no historical foundation. It may be said, perhaps, Their insig- 
that the fact of the secular origin of these garments nificance. 
does not exclude their importance when, in after-times, symbol- 
ical significations were attached to them ; and possibly it may be 
urged that the most unquestionably sacerdotal symbols were, in 
the first instance, drawn from homelier objects. But there is 
this wide distinction between the origin of the Christian eccle- 
siastical vestments and of those of other religions. The Christian 
dress, as we have indicated, was intended, in its origin, not to 
separate the minister from the people, but to make him, in 
outward show and appearance, exactly the same. The Jewish 
high-priest and the priestly tribe were, on the contrary, as in 
other matters, so in their dress, from the very first intended to 
be thereby separated, at least in their public ministrations, as 
far as possible from the rest of the community. It would 
have been perfectly easy, had the Christian Church of the first 
and second centuries been possessed with the idea of carrying 
on the Jewish priesthood, to have adopted either the very 
dress worn by the Jewish priests, or some other dress equally 
distinctive. The Jewish priest was distinguished from his 
countrymen by his bare feet, by his trousers, by his white 
linen robe, by his sash thirty-two yards long,* by his fillet, by 
his tippet or ephod ; the high-priest by his breastplate, by his 
bells, and by his pomegranates; and these vestments were 
regarded as so indispensable to his office that the high-priest- 
hood was at last actually conveyed from predecessor to suc- 
cessor by the act of handing them on to each high-priest ; the 
possession of the vestments, in fact, conferred the office itself. 
Nothing whatever of the kind was done, or, we may add, even 
in the wildest flight of modern superstition has been done, 
with the vestments of the Christian clergy. Neither trousers, j- 
nor breastplate, nor bells, nor pomegranates, nor long winding 
sash, nor naked feet, have ever been regarded, and certainly 
were not in the early ages regarded, as part of the dress or 
undress of the Christian minister ; nor was the act of ordina- 
tion ever performed by the transfer of chasuble, or lawn sleeves, 

* Bahr's SymboliTc, p. 68. 

t In Jerome's letter to Fabiola (Ep. 64), containing an elaborate exposition 
of the dresses of the Jewish priests, there is not a word to indicate that they 
were adopted by the Christian clergy. 



148 CHRISTIAN INSTITUTIONS. 

or cassock. The whole stress of the theological argument in 
favor of the importance of these dresses depends on proving 
that such as they may by any one now be supposed to be, in 
intention and in significance, such they were in the early 
ages. It is alleged that, by parting with them, we part with a 
primitive doctrine of the Church. But, if the facts which we 
have stated are correct, the connection between these dresses and 
the sacerdotal theories with which they have been entangled is cut 
off at the very root. Unless it can be shown that they were sacer- 
dotal in the second or third centuries, it is wholly irrelevant to 
allege that they became sacerdotal in the thirteenth or the nine- 
teenth centuries. Whatever sacerdotal, or symbolical, or sacra- 
mental associations have been attached to them may be mediaeval, 
but certainly are not primitive ; and those who wish to preserve 
the substance of the primitive usage should officiate, not in the 
dresses which are at present worn in Roman, Anglican, and 
Non-conformist Churches, but in the every-day dress of com- 
mon life — in overcoats, or smock-frocks, or shirt-sleeves, 
according as they belonged to the higher or inferior grade of 
the Christian ministry. We are not arguing in favor of such 
a return to primitive usage. In this, as in a thousand other 
cases, it is the depth of retrograde absurdity to suppose that 
we are to throw off the garb, or the institutions, or the 
language of civilization, in order to accommodate ourselves to 
the literal platform of the early ages. Matthew Arnold well 
observes that to declaim against bishops in the House of Lords, 
or against the Privy Council, because St. Paul knew nothing 
of them, is just as unreasonable as it would be to declaim 
against the wearing of braces, because St. Paul wore no braces. 
And so, on the other hand, to insist on extinguishing the black 
coat or the black gown of the Non-conformist minister, or the 
white surplice of the Anglican minister, or the red stockings 
of the Roman cardinal, because they are not the ordinary 
every-day dress which is now worn, or would have been 
worn in early times, would be as superstitious as the vul- 
gar objection to Church establishments. There may be reasons 
against ecclesiastical vestments of all kinds. But the fact of 
their being modern is not of itself against them, unless we 
insist on making them essential as containing ideas which 
they do not, and never were intended to, symbolize. 



ECCLESIASTICAL VESTMENTS. 149 

2. But secondly, it may be said, partly by the opponents 
and partly by the advocates of these vestments, that, whatever 
may be the history of their origin, all that we have Their con- 
practically now to consider is the purpose to which trasts - 
they are at present applied. It was maintained not long ago by 
a distinguished political leader, that to treat these badges with 
indifference would be no less absurd than to treat the Red 
Flag as merely a piece of bunting, whereas it really represents 
anarchy and revolution and must be dealt with accordingly. 
We venture to think that this very illustration furnishes an 
answer to the allegations of importance on the one side or the 
other brought to bear upon this question. No doubt with the 
uneducated and ill-educated of all classes a superficial badge or 
color often outweighs every other consideration. It is within 
the memory of living persons in Norfolk, where party feeling 
ran higher than in the rest of England, that the blue or 
orange color of the electioneering flags was the one single 
notion which the lower classes had of the great Whig or the 
great Conservative parties for whom they were led to vote. 
An illiterate artisan on his death-bed would say, as a plea 
for the condonation of many sins, "At least I have been true 
to my colors." And on one occasion, when in a country town, 
by some accident, the blue and orange colors were inter- 
changed, the whole mass of the voters followed the color to 
which they were accustomed, although it was attached to the 
party which represented the exactly opposite principles. We 
cannot deny that in dealing with popular passion and prejudice 
on this as on other matters, it may be necessary to concede far 
more than either correct history or calm reason will justify. 
But it may be worth while in all these cases to show how in- 
significant and how valueless is the form. Is it not our duty, 
in the first instance, to represent, at least to ourselves and the 
more educated, the real state of the case — to be fully per- 
suaded that these things are of themselves, as St. Paul says, 
absolutely " nothing " — even if immediately afterwards, in 
condescension to weak brethren, we are inclined, as he was, to 
go a long way either in avoiding or in adopting them ? Even 
in that very instance which was just now quoted of the Red 
Flag, on an occasion when its adoption might have led to the 
most terrible results both in France and in Europe, when on 



150 CHRISTIAN INSTITUTIONS. 

February 25, 1848, a raging mob, surging round the steps of 
the Hotel de Ville of Paris, demanded that this crimson ban- 
ner should be adopted instead of the tricolor, that calamity, 
as it certainly would have been, was averted, even with that 
savage multitude, by the eloquent appeal of one man to the 
indisputable origin of its first appearance in the history of 
France. " The Tricolor," said Lamartine, " has made the tour 
of the world with our glories and our victories ; but the Red 
Flag has only made the tour of the Champ de Mars, trailed i» 
mire and defiled with blood." He alluded, of course, to the 
fact that the Red Flag was originally the badge of martial law, 
and yet more to the first distinct occasion of its adoption, on 
that dark day — among the most disgraceful in the annals of 
the first French Revolution — which witnessed the execution of 
one of the noblest of Frenchmen under the insults of a furious 
populace who waved the red flag before him, dragged it through 
the mud, and drew blood with it from his venerable face. By 
that calm historical allusion, though fully appreciated perhaps 
only by a few, Lamartine was able to disperse pacifically and 
reasonably a movement which, had he fired at the flag with 
shot and shell as a symbol of anarchy, would probably have 
deluged Paris with blood. If, in like manner, the Comte de 
Chambord could be convinced that the white flag represented 
in its origin, not legitimate monarchy, but the white plume of 
a Huguenot chief, he might be persuaded to abandon that 
which, as it would seem, no force of arms will ever enable him 
to relinquish, or the country to adopt. 

In all such cases it is our duty, whether as opponents or up- 
holders of these forms, to see things as they really are, and 
not to adopt the passionate and ill-informed expressions of 
those whom we ought to guide, and whose guidance we ought 
to be the last to accept. 

3. Thirdly, it may be remarked that in point of fact it is 
not so much any theory concerning these dresses which arouses 
Their novel P°P u ^ ar indignation, as the circumstance that they 
and foreign are unusual, startling, and therefore offensive ; and 
ongm. a j SQ t ^ at j^gy are regarded as borrowed from the 

Roman Catholic Church, and therefore viewed with suspicion, 
not unnaturally, as the outward signs and tokens of a system 
which is believed to have been the cause of infinite mischief 



ECCLESIASTICAL VESTMENTS. 151 

and misery to England three hundred years ago, and to Spain, 
Italy, and France at this moment. And this ground of indig- 
nation, apart from any sacerdotal or sacrificial associations, is 
further borne out by the fact that it is actually the ground on 
which these particular vestments are adopted by those who 
wear them. We are not aware that in any instance there has 
been an attempt on the part of our English clergy, either to 
wear what they may imagine to have been actually worn in 
the second and third centuries, or to wear what is worn in the 
Greek, the Coptic, or the Armenian Church, or even in the 
time of Edward VI. in England. They are imported, as we 
may see by newspaper advertisements, simply from the maga- 
zines of France and of Belgium, according to the last fashions 
of Brussels or Paris. They represent, therefore, in their actual 
adoption, merely the usages of these foreign modern Churches, 
and nothing else. Indeed, we may say they are copied with 
almost Chinese exactness of imitation, even to their rents and 
patches. An instance may be selected which does not belong 
at present to the disputed category, but which therefore will 
the better illustrate the question, — the modern practice of cut- 
ting off the surplice at the knees. This, assuredly not copied 
from either Jewish or primitive ceremonial, is the exact copy 
of the surplice of the modern Roman Church, but of that gar- 
ment under peculiar conditions. It has been said, on good 
anthority, that originally the Roman surplice reached to the 
feet, but that the lower part was of lace; then that the lace, 
being too expensive, was cut away, and so left the surplice 
in that state, of which this economical curtailment has been 
adopted as the model of English usage. 

We do not say that this peculiarity is calculated to render 
them less odious to popular feeling ; but it at once clears away 
a mass of useless declamation, either for or against, which we 
find in speeches, petitions, and pamphlets. And it is more 
important to notice this, because the dislike to untimely in- 
novations or foreign costumes rests on a larger basis than 
concerns the particular clothes which have been introduced 
during the last ten years. A surplice adopted suddenly where 
a gown has hitherto been worn has provoked an opposition 
quite as violent, and has been defended with a tenacity quite 
as exaggerated, as has been shown with regard to the more 



152 CHRISTIAN INSTITUTIONS. 

fanciful vestments of latter days. The cope, which, according 
to some of the fine-drawn distinctions, both of enemies and of 
friends, is not supposed to be " sacrificial," would produce 
quite as much consternation in a rustic parish, or even in a 
country cathedral, as the chasuble, which is alleged to be 
" sacrificial." It is the foreign, unusual, defiant, and, if so be, 
illegal introduction of these things which constitutes their of- 
fence. 

V. Taking these practical principles as our guide, we pro- 
ceed to ask what, under our actual circumstances, is the best 
course to pursue with regard to these usages. 

1. First, it would seem to be the duty of every one who is 
a voice and not merely an echo to proclaim their absolute in- 
importance difference and triviality, when compared with mat- 
f^vSI^S" ters of serious religion. It was said by a great 

ing their in- . o m j © 

difference, divine, some thirty years ago, that it was the pecu- 
liar blot of factions or parties in the Church of England to 
have fought, as for matters of importance, for this or that 
particular kind of dress. The remark is true. Thrice over 
has the English Church been distracted by a vestiarian con- 
troversy — first, at the Reformation, when Bishop Hooper re- 
fused to wear a square cap because God had made heads round ; 
secondly, in the controversy between Laud and the Puritans ; 
and, thirdly, in our own time, beginning with the Exeter riots 
of 1840, and continuing even now. No such controversy has 
ever distracted either the Church of Rome, or the Church of 
Luther, or the Church of Calvin. It is high time to see 
whether we could not now, once and forever, dispel the idea 
that the Kingdom of God, or " the workshop of Satan," con- 
sists in the color of a coat, or the shape of a cloak, or the use 
of a handkerchief. Viewed merely in a doctrinal point of 
view, no more deadly blow could be struck at the ceremonial, 
and what may be called the Etruscan theory of religion, than 
to fill the atmosphere with the sense of the entire insignificance 
of dresses or postures. To speak of them as of no significance 
is the true translation of the great maxim of the Apostle, — 
" Circumcision availeth nothing, nor uncircumcision." 

2. Secondly, if this absolute adiaphorism could be made to 
take possession of the popular mind, our course would be very 
much cleared. We might then view more calmly the legal as- 



ECCLESIASTICAL VESTMENTS. 153 

pect of the question, as depending on the validity and the mean- 
ing of the Ornaments' Rubric. This ingenious ob- _,, _ 
scunty is a singular example, either or the disin- merits' Ru- 
genuousness or of the negligence with which the bric * 
Prayer Book was reconstructed during the passionate period 
of the Restoration. 

But supposing that it should be decided once and again that 
the rubric forbids the use of these vestments, the fact of their 
historical insignificance would be a consolation to those who, 
willing to obey the law, would thus be constrained to give up 
what the usage of some years has no doubt endeared to them. 
They would feel then that they were not surrendering any 
principle, but merely a foreign custom, which having been in- 
troduced, let us hope, with the innocent motive of beautifying 
public worship, they abandoned as good citizens and good 
Churchmen, when the law declared against it ; and that in so 
doing they were parting with a practice which had no other 
intrinsic value than what belongs to an antiquarian reminis- 
cence of that early age of the Church when there was no dis- 
tinction between clergy and laity, between common and 
ecclesiastical life, and that the only historical association legiti- 
mately connected with it was the most anti-sacerdotal — the 
most Protestant — that Christian antiquity has handed down to 
us. 

And on the other hand, if it should be decided that the 
rubric requires these vestments to be worn, then again, to those 
who have hitherto objected to them, it would be no less a con- 
solation to know that such a requirement did not enforce the 
use of anything which symbolized a doctrine either of the 
Real Presence or of the priesthood, but was simply the last 
English, or, if so be, the last Parisian development of the shirts 
and coats and rugs of the peasants and gentry of the third cen- 
tury. And in this contingency, two considerations occur 
which might mitigate what to some persons would appear to 
be a serious grievance. The first is that, if these clothes should 
be declared legal, the probability is that the interest attaching 
to them would almost entirely cease. Half of the excitement 
they now produce, both in those who defend and those who 
attack them, is from the belief that they are, more or less, 

contrary to the law. Whatever the Supreme Court of Appeal 

17* 



154 0HBI8TIAN IWSTITttTIOM. 

takes under its patronage loses, in the eyes of many zealous 
clergy, its special ecclesiastical value. When, for example, 
the Credence Table was legalized and shown to be not an ap- 
pendage to an altar, but a sideboard on which the dishes were 
placed in order to be tasted before being set on the table, with the 
view of seeing whether they contained poison, that part of the 
church furniture ceased to be a bone of contention. Even the 
cope has comparatively lost its interest since it was commanded 
by the Privy Council ; just as it may be fairly doubted whether 
the significance of the eastward position can stand the shock 
given when it is found that one of the solitary witnesses to it 
in the past generation was Bishop Maltby, the Whig of Whigs, 
the Protestant of Protestants, the recipient of the famous 
Durham letter. There is a story of a distinguished prelate 
now deceased which may serve to illustrate the probable 
action of the law. A clergyman, who had contended in his 
village church for various points of ceremonial, at last ventured 
to ask, with fear and trembling, whether " his lordship could 
allow the choristers to appear in surplices." " By all means," 
said the bishop, "let them appear in surplices — it will help to 
degrade that vestment." What he meant, of course, was that 
the surplice would then lose its peculiar sacerdotal significance ; 
and certainly the legalizing of any dress by the Protestant 
Legislature of England would immediately place such dress 
on a footing and in a light which would admit of no miscon- 
ception as to what was intended or not intended by it. 

And, if the law should be thus pronounced, it would then in 
all probability become a matter of practical consideration 
whether an ancient and difficult rubric, thus suddenly revived, 
could be expected to be universally put in force throughout 
the country, and would thus open the door to the intervention 
of that principle which is so well laid down in Canon Robert- 
son's book, " How shall we Conform to the Liturgy ?" and in 
the succession of admirable articles in the " Quarterly Review" 
on the same subject — namely, that, in the matter of these 
ancient rubrical observances, common sense and charity and 
the discretion of the Ordinary must come in to modify and 
accommodate rigid rules which otherwise would produce a 
deadlock in every office of the Church. 

In point of fact, the cope, even since the recent decision in 



ECCLESIASTICAL VESTMENTS. 155 

its favor, has, except in a few special cases, been hardly worn 
at all. There has not been throughout the whole Church more 
than three or four instances of deference to this reanimated 
ghost. And with regard to a much larger assortment of 
clerical vestments, but resting on the same authority as the 
cope, — namely, the Canons of 1604, — it may be safely asserted 
that not one clergyman in ten thousand ever wears or thinks of 
wearing any of them. Those canons command every clergy- 
man, in walking or travelling, to appear in " a gown, with a 
standing collar," or in " a tippet of silk or sarcenet," and on 
no account to wear a cloak with long sleeves, and especially 
"not to wear light-colored stockings." This 74th Canon is 
everywhere disregarded, and though it contains the sensible 
remark that " its meaning is not to attribute any holiness or 
special worthiness to the said garments " (the very principle 
for which we have been contending), "but for decency, 
gravity, and order ;" yet it is not less precise in its enactments 
than the 58th and 24th Canons, and must stand or fall with 
them. It may be quoted on this occasion to show how com- 
pletely 'and irrevocably custom has been allowed to override a 
rule, which is not, indeed, properly speaking, the law of the 
Church (being only a canon and not a statute), but by which, 
nevertheless, it has been often attempted in these matters to 
provide that the laws of the Church shall be regulated. 

And this, perhaps, is the place for considering the question 
whether, supposing that the existing law fail either from 
obscurity or obsoleteness to control our present Useiessness 
usage, it is desirable to pass a new legislative enact- of mbri cs. 
ment which shall lay down precisely what clothes are or are 
not to be worn by the clergy, inside or outside their official 
ministrations. The same principle of the intrinsic indifference 
of these things which we have laid down will help us here to 
a right solution. If we can once resolve that the question of 
clerical, as of all dress, is simply a matter of custom and 
fashion, or, as the 74th Canon says, of " decency, gravity, and 
order," then we may safely venture to say that to enumerate 
any catalogue or wardrobe of such clothes either in an Act of 
Parliament, or even in a canon, would be entirely unworthy of 
the dignity of an Act of the Legislature or even of the Con- 
vocations. It would be unworthy, and (unless it entered into 



156 CHRISTIAN INSTITUTIONS. 

details which would be absolutely ridiculous) it would soon be 
utterly useless. For who can now say exactly what it is 
which constitutes a legal cope or chasuble, or the legal 
length of a surplice, or "guards, and welts, and cuts," or 
" a coif, or wrought night-cap ?" And the total failure of 
the canon just cited proves how inevitably such rules fall^' into 
hopeless desuetude after a few years. Nor would such enu- 
meration be necessary. One advantage of the deep obscurity 
of the Ornaments' Rubric has been that it has shown us how 
possible it is for a Church (except in occasional excitements) 
to exist without any rule at all on the subject. Not a single 
garment is named by name in that rubric, nor in any part of 
the Prayer Book from beginning to end ; * and yet on the 
whole a comely and decent order has been observed in the 
English Church, only with such change as the silent lapse of 
time necessarily brings with it. And it should be observed 
that in the Irish Church before its recent calamities, in the 
American Episcopal Church, and in the Established Church of 
Scotland, not even the shadow of the Ornaments' Rubric ex- 
ists, nor anything analogous to it. Custom, and custom alone, 
has provided the white gown, the black gown, the blue gown, 
as the case may be. To this easy yoke, and to this safe guide 
of custom and common sense, we also might safely commit 
ourselves. 

3. This leads us to another obvious conclusion. If there be 
no intrinsic value in these vestments, then, whether the law 
Foil of in- f or kid s them or enforces them, the same duty is in- 
troducing cumbent on all those who regard the substance of 
vestments. re ligion above its forms, namely, that on no ac- 
count should these garbs, whether legal or illegal, be intro- 
duced into churches or parishes where they give offence to the 
parish or the congregation. The more any clergyman can 
appreciate the absolute indifference of such things in them- 
selves, the more will he feel himself compelled to withdraw 
them the moment he finds that they produce the opposite 
effect to that which he intended them to have. On the neces- 
sity of such a restriction, it is a satisfaction to believe that 

* The only exception is not in the Prayer Book itself, but in the single office 
of the Consecration of a Bishop, and in that there is no mention of lawn sleeves 
or chimere, but only of the " rochet." 



ECCLESIASTICAL VESTMENTS. 157 

many even of those whose opinions rather incline them to 
these peculiar usages, would more or less concur. Quarrels 
produced in parishes by such trivial causes ought to be stifled 
instantly and at once. The game, however delightful, of 
maintaining these vestments, is not worth the burning the can- 
dle of discord even for a single moment in a single parish. 
And, on the other hand, as regards those congregations, where 
no offence is given, it seems to be " straining at a gnat and 
swallowing a camel," whilst we freely allow (and no one is dis- 
posed to curtail the legal liberty) the preaching and practising 
of the most extravagant — the most uncharitable — the most 
senseless doctrines, on whatever side, to stumble at permitting 
a few congregations here and there to indulge themselves in 
the pleasure of a few colors and a few shapes to which we 
know with absolute certainty that no religious significance is 
intrinsically attached; and of which any significance, that 
may be imagined to be attached to them by those who use 
them, can be equally or better expressed by garments of quite 
another make, and by ceremonies of quite another kind. 

If we are really desirous of resisting the malady of reac- 
tionary hierarchical sentiment, let us grapple not with these 
superficial and ambiguous symptoms, but with the disease 
itself. The refusal to acknowledge State interference with 
Church affairs, whether on the part of Roman Ultramontanes, 
Scottish Free Churchmen, or English Liberationists ; the 
exciting speeches of so-called Liberal candidates to miscalled 
Liberal constituents on behalf of what they choose to call 
spiritual independence ; the attempts from time to time by 
legal prosecution, or angry declamation, to stifle free critical 
inquiry in the Church of England; the refusal to acknowl- 
edge the pastoral character of our Wesleyan or Nonconform- 
ing brethren ; the tendency to encourage a material rather than 
a moral and spiritual view of Christian ordinances; the reading 
of the services of the Church inaudibly and unintelligibly, in 
imitation of a Church which employs a dead language, — all 
these endeavors, conducted with however conscientious a 
desire to do good, and however justified by certain elements 
in the Church of England, or in human nature — are more 
hostile to the true spirit of the Reformation than any evanes- 
cent fashions of clerical costume, which perish with the using. 



158 CHRISTIAN INSTITUTIONS. 

Even to the most extreme Puritan and to the most extreme 
Calvinist, we venture to quote, in justification of an excep- 
tional toleration in these trivial matters, the saying of the 
great John Calvin himself, "They are tolerabiles ineptice." 

4. Finally, it would be a clear gain to the interests of prac- 
tical, moral, and spiritual religion, if by granting all feasible 
Attention to toleration to these innocent archaisms in a few 
reaHm S ort- eccen tric places, the majority of Churchmen could 
ance. be left free to pursue the improvements which the 

Church and nation so urgently need, and which have hitherto 
been defeated by the disproportionate and inordinate attention 
devoted both by friends and enemies to this insignificant 
point. What is really wanted, both for the good of the 
Church and as the best corrective to the superstitious and 
materializing tendency which many of us deplore, is not an 
attempt to restrain particular external usages, except, as before 
remarked, when they give offence to the parishioners ; but, 
regardless of any threats, to aim at such improvements as 
would be desirable, even if there were not a single Ritualist in 
existence ; to develop the Protestant elements of the Church, 
which are stunted and dwarfed from the fear of offending 
those who, whilst they demand for themselves a liberty which 
liberal Churchmen have always endeavored to gain for them, 
have hitherto too often refused to concede the slightest liberty 
to others. 

The real evils of this tendency, whether in the English or in 
the Roman Catholic Church, which threatens to swallow up 
the larger, freer, more reasonable spirit which existed in both 
Churches fifty years ago, are obvious. The encouragement of 
a morbid dependence on the priesthood ; a vehement antago- 
nism to the law ; excessive value attached to the technical forms 
of theology and ritual ; a revival of a scholastic phraseology 
which has lost its meaning; a passion for bitter controversy 
and for exaggeration of differences, — all these evils are for the 
most part beyond the reach of legal or ecclesiastical tribunals, 
and can only be met, as they can be fully met, first by fearless 
and dispassionate argument, but secondly and chiefly by the 
encouragement of a healthier tone in the public mind and 
clerical opinion, as at once a corrective and a counterpoise. 
What is needed is not to exterminate, but to act independently 



ECCLESIASTICAL VESTMENTS. 159 

of, the party which have so often obstructed improvement by- 
mere clamor and menace. The controversy concerning the 
lesser points of ceremonial has too much diverted the public 
attention from the substance to the accidents. The adherents 
of these vestments count amongst their ranks the wise and the 
foolish, the serious and the frivolous. Let them, in their own 
special localities, when they do not impose their own fancies 
upon unwilling listeners or spectators, by these colors and 
forms, do their best and their worst. Let them add, if so be, 
the peacock's feathers which the Pope borrowed from the 
Kings of Persia, or the scarlet shoes which he took from the 
Roman Emperors. Let them freely have, if the law al- 
lows it, the liberty of facing to any point of the com- 
pass they desire — with Mussulmans to the east, with the Pope 
to the west, with Hindoos to the north, or with old-fashioned 
Anglicans to the south. This is no more than is deserved by 
the zeal of some ; it is no more than may be safely conceded 
to the scruples of all who can be indulged without vexing the 
consciences of others. But then let those also who take another 
view of the main attractions of religion be permitted to enjoy 
the liberty which, till thirty years ago, was freely permitted. 
Let the rules which, if rendered inflexible, cripple the energies 
of the Church and mar its usefulness be relaxed by some 
machinery such as was in use in former times, before the 
modern creation of the almost insuperable obstructions of the 
majorities of the four Houses of Convocation. Let each Bish- 
op or Ordinary have the legal power, subject to any checks 
which Parliament will impose, of sanctioning what is almost 
universally allowed to pass unchallenged. Let us endeavor to 
abate those prolongations and repetitions which have made our 
services, contrary to the intention of their framers, a by-word 
at home and abroad. Let us endeavor to secure that there 
shall be the option of omitting the questionable though inter- 
esting document whose most characteristic passages one of the 
two Convocations has virtually abjured. Let us permit, openly 
or tacitly, the modifications in the rubrics of the Baptismal, 
the Marriage, the Commination, and the Ordination Services, 
which ought to be an offence to none, and would be an 
immense relief to many. Let us seek the means of enabling 
the congregations of the National Church to hear, not merely, 



160 CHRISTIAN INSTITUTIONS. 

as at present, the lectures, but the sermons of preachers 
second to none in our own Church, though at present not of 
it. Let us be firmly persuaded that error is most easily 
eradicated by establishing truth, and darkness most perma- 
nently displayed by diffusing light; and then whilst the best 
parts of the High Church party will be preserved to the Church 
by their own intrinsic excellence, the worst parts will be put 
down, not by the irritating and often futile process of repres- 
sion, but by the pacific and far more effectual process of 
enforcing the opposite truths, of creating in the Church a 
wholesome atmosphere of manly, generous feeling, in which all 
that is temporary, acrid, and trivial will fade away, and all that 
is eternal, reasonable, and majestic will flourish and abound. 



TEE BASILICA. 161 



CHAPTER IX. 

THE BASILICA. 

What was the original idea which the Christians of the first 
centuries conceived of a place of worship ? What was the 
model which they chose for themselves when, on emerging 
from the Catacombs, they looked round upon the existing 
edifices of the civilized world ? 

For nearly two hundred years, set places of worship had no 
existence at all. In the third century, notices of them became 
more frequent, but still in such ambiguous terms that it is 
difficult to ascertain how far the building or how far the 
congregation is the prominent idea in the writer's mind ; and 
it is not, therefore, till the fourth century, when they became 
so general as to acquire a fixed form and name, that our 
inquiry properly begins. 

Of the public edifices of the heathen world, there were 
three which lent themselves to the Christian use. One was 
the circular tomb. This was seen in the various forms of 
memorial churches which from the Church of the Holy Sep- 
ulchre spread throughout the Empire. But this was excep- 
tional. Another was the Temple. Though occasionally adopt- 
ed by the Eastern Emperors,* and^in some few instances, 
as the Pantheon, at Rome itself, it was never incorporated 
into the institutions of Western Christendom. It was not 
only that all its associations, both of name and place, jarred 
with the most cherished notions of Christian purity and holi' 
ness, but also that the very construction of the edifice was 
wholly incompatible with the new idea of worship, which 
Christianity had brought into the world. The Temple of Isis 
at Pompeii (to take the most complete specimen now extant 
of a heathen temple at the time of the Christian era) at once 

* Bingham, viii. 2, 4. The Egyptian temples were many of them so used; as 
at Athens the Parthenon and the Temple of Theseus. 



162 CHRISTIAN INSTITUTIONS. 

exhibits the impossibility of amalgamating elements so hetero- 
geneous. It was exactly in accordance with the genius of 
heathenism, that the priest should minister in the presence of 
the God, withdrawn from view in the little cell or temple that 
rose in the centre of the consecrated area ; but how should 
the president of the Christian assembly be concealed from the 
vast concourse in whose name he acted, and who, as with the 
voice of many waters, were to reply " Amen " to his giving of 
thanks? It was most congenial to the feeling of Pagan wor- 
shippers that they should drop in, one by one, or in separate 
groups, to present their individual prayers or offerings to their 
chosen divinity ; but how was a Christian congregation, which, 
by its very name of ecclesia, recalled the image of those tumul- 
tuous crowds which had thronged the Pnyx or Forum in the 
days of the Athenian or Roman Commonwealth, to be brought 
within the narrow limits of the actual edifice which was sup- 
posed to be the dwelling of the God ? Even the Temple of 
Jerusalem itself, pure as it was from the recollections which 
invested the shrines of the heathen deities, yet from its dark- 
ness, its narrowness, and the inaccessibility of its innermost 
cell, was obviously inadequate to become the visible home of 
a religion to which the barriers of Judaism were hardly less 
uncongenial than those of Paganism itself. A temple, wheth- 
er heathen or Jewish, could never be the model of a purely 
Christian edifice. The very name itself had now, in Chris- 
tian phraseology, passed into a higher sphere; and how- 
ever much long use may have habituated us to the application 
of the word to material buildings, we can well understand how 
instinctively an earlier age would shrink from any lower 
meaning than the moral and spiritual sense attached to it in 
those Apostolical Writings which had taught the world that 
the true temple of God was in the hearts and consciences of 
men. And therefore, in the words of Bingham, "for the first 
three ages the name is scarce ever" (he might have said 
never) " applied to Christian places of worship ;" and though 
instances of it are to be found in the rhetorical language of 
the fourth, yet it never obtained a hold on the ordinary 
language of Christendom. The use of the word in Roman 
Catholic countries for Protestant churches is probably dictated 
\>y the desire to represent the Protestant service as heathen. 



THE BASILICA. 163 

What, then, was the ancient heathen structure, whose title 
has thus acquired a celebrity so far beyond its original inten- 
tion? It is the especial offspring and symbol of _ _ ... 
, Tr . • «v x- r r\ x. * \ •■-■•• t> TheBasilica. 

Western civilization; — Greek in its origin, Koman 

in its progress, Christian in its ultimate development, the word 
is coextensive with the range of the European family. In the 
earliest form under which we can catch any trace 
of it, it stands in the dim antiquity of the Homeric 
age — at the point where the first beginnings of Grecian civili- 
zation melt away into the more primitive forms of Oriental 
society. It is the gateway of the Royal Palace, in which the 
ancient Kings, Agamemnon at Mycenae, David at Jerusalem, 
Pharaoh at Thebes or Memphis, sat to hear and to judge the 
complaints of their people ; and of which the trace * was pre- 
served at Athens in the " King's Portico " under the Pnyx, 
where the Archon King performed the last judicial functions 
of the last shadow of the old Athenian royalty. But it was 
amongst the Romans that it first assumed that precise form 
and meaning which have given it so lasting an importance. 
Judging from the great prominence of the Basilicas as public 
buildings, and from the more extended application of them in 
the Imperial times to purposes of general business, the nearest 
parallel to them in modern cities would doubtless be found in 
the Town-hall or Exchange. What, in fact, the rock-hewn 
semicircle of the Pnyx was at Athens — what the open plat- 
form of the Forum had been in the earlier days of Rome 
itself f — that, in the later times of the Commonwealth, was 
the Basilica — the general place of popular resort and official 
transactions ; but, in accordance with the increased refinement 
of a more civilized age, protected from the midday sun and 
the occasional storm by walls and roof. There was a long 
hall divided by two rows of columns into a central avenue, 
with two side aisles, in one of which the male, in the other the 
female appellants to justice waited their turn. The middle 
aisle was occupied by the chance crowd that assembled to hear 

* It is perhaps doubtful how far the form of the word " Basilica," though of 
course itself purely Greek, was ever used with this acceptation in Greece 
itself. 2-7-oa. 0acr<.Aiw? is the designation of the Athenian portico, and oIkos or 
vabs £<zo-iA.e'ws is Eusebius' expression for the Christian Basilica. 

t The Tynwald in the Isle of Man is an exact likeness still existing of these 
early assemblies in the open air. 



164 CHRISTIAN INSTITUTIONS. 

the proceedings, or for purposes of merchandise. A trans- 
verse avenue which crossed the others in the centre, if used at 
all, was occupied by the advocates and others engaged in the 
public business. The whole building was closed by a long 
semicircular recess, in the center of which sat the praetor or 
supreme judge, seen high above the heads of all on the 
elevated* "tribunal," which was deemed the indispensable 
symbol of the Roman judgment-seat. 

This was the form of the Basilica, as it met the view of the 
first Christians. Few words are needed to account for its 
its adapta- adaptation to the use of a Christian church. Some- 
tlan wS 1 * 8 " tmn &> no doubt, is to be ascribed, as Dean Milman 
ship. well remarks, to the fact,j that "as these buildings 

were numerous, and attached to any imperial residence, they 
might be bestowed at once on the Christians without either 
interfering with the course of justice, or bringing the religious 
feelings of the hostile parties into collision." Still, the instances 
of actual transformation are exceedingly rare — in most cases it 
must have been impossible, from the erection of the early 
Christian churches on the graves, real or supposed, of martyrs 
and apostles, which, according to the almost universal practice 
of the ancient world, were necessarily without the walls of the 
city, as the halls of justice, from their connection with every- 
day life, were necessarily within. It is on more general grounds 
that we may trace something in the type itself of the Basilica, 
at least not uncongenial to the early Christian views of wor- 
ship, independent of any causes of mere accidental convenience. 
What this was has been anticipated in what has been said of 
the rejection of the temple. There was now a "church," a 
" congregation," an " assembly, " which could no longer be 
hemmed within the narrow precincts, or detained in the outer 
courts of the inclosure — where could they be so naturally 



* The " judgment-hall " or praetorium of the Roman magistrates in the prov- 
inces had no further resemblance to the Basilica than in the coincidence of 
name which must have arisen from their frequent formation out of the palaces 
of the former kings of the conquered nations. But so necessary was the 
elevation of the judge's seat considered to the final delivery of the sentence, 
that, as has been made familiar to us in one memorable instance (John xix. 
13), the absence of the usual tribunal was supplied by a tesselated pavement, 
which the magistrate carried with him, and on which his chair or throne was 
placed before he could pronounce sentence. 

t History of Christianity, iii. 34S 



THE BASILICA. 165 

placed as in the long aisles which had received the concourse 
of the Roman populace, and which now became the " nave " 
of the Christian Cathedrals ? Whatever distinctions existed in 
the Christian society were derived, not as in the Jewish temple, 
from any notions of inherent religious differences between dif- 
ferent classes of men, but merely, as in the Jewish synagogue, 
from considerations of order and decency; and where could 
these be found more readily than in the separate places still 
retained by the sexes in the aisles of the Basilica; or .the 
appropriation of the upper end of the building to the clergy 
and singers? There was a law to be proclaimed, and a verdict 
to be pronounced, by the highest officers of the new society ; 
and what more natural, than that the Bishop should take his 
seat on the lofty tribunal of the praetor,* and thence rebuke, 
exhort, or command, with an authority not the less convincing, 
because it was moral and not legal ? There was, lastly, a bond 
of communion between all the members of that assembly, to 
which the occupants of the Temple and the Basilica had been 
alike strangers— what more fitting than that the empty centre of 
the ancient judgment-hall, where its several avenues and aisles 
joined in one, should now receive a new meaning; and that 
there, neither in the choir nor nave, but in the meeting point 
of both, should be erected the Altar or Table of that commu- 
nion which was to belong exclusively neither to the clergy nor 
to the people, but to bind both together in indissoluble har- 
mony ? \ 

* The Basilica iEmiliana and the Basilica Julia were examples in the Roman 
Forum of this sort of edifice. But there were others where the judicial charac- 
ter was more strongly impressed on the building. Such were the Basilica Ses- 
soriana, now converted into the Church of Sta. Croce in the Sessorian Palace 
at Rome ; the Basilica Palatina, still to be traced on the ruins of the Palatine, 
with its apse and its oblong hall ; the Basilica attached to the palace at Treves, 
and since converted into a Protestant church by the late King of Prussia. 

t The " atrium " and " impluvium " of the more private hall seem to have 
become the models of the outer court and "cantharus" or fountain of the 
Basilica. The obvious appropriation of the seats immediately round the altar 
to the emperor and his attendants, when present, is preserved in the probable 
derivation of "chancellor," from the "'cancelli " or "rails," by which that 
officer sat. In the Eastern Church the screen of the Iconostasis, which now 
divides the nave from the choir, has assumed a solid shape to furnish a stand 
for the increasing multiplication of sacred pictures. But originally it was a 
curtain, then a light trellis work. And in the Western Church it has never in- 
truded, until in the fifteenth century, for qiiite another reason, the screen was 
introduced to hide the local shrine of the saint, as at St. Albans and Westmin- 
ster Abbey (if so be) from the eyes of common worshippers. The altar was a 
wooden structure, as it still is in the Eastern Church It was gradually chang- 
ed to stone in the sixth century, from the incorporation of a relic of a saint 



166 CHRISTIAN INSTITUTIONS. 

There are some general reflections which, this transformation 
suggests. In the first place, it may no doubt have been an 
accident that the first Christian place of worship should have 
been taken from an edifice so expressive of the popular life of 
Greece and Rome, — so exact an antithesis to the seclusion of 
the Jewish and Pagan Temple. But, if it was an accident, it 
is strikingly in accordance with all that we know of the strength 
of the popular element of the early Church, — not merely in its 
first origin, when even an Apostle did not pronounce sentence 
on an offender, or issue a decree or appoint an officer, without 
the concurrence of the whole society; but even in 
character of those later times, when Augustine fled from city 
the church. ^ c -^y ^ esca p e f r0 iii the elevation which he was 
destined to receive from the wild enthusiasm of a n African 
populace ; when a layman, a magistrate, an unbaptized cate- 
chumen was, on the chance acclamation of an excited mob, 
transformed into Ambrose, Archbishop of Milan. It is pre- 
cisely this true image of the early Church, the union of essen- 
tial religious equality with a growing distinction of rank and 
order, that the Basilica was to bring before us in a visible and 
tangible shape. It might have been unnatural, if the whole 
constitution, the whole religion of the three first centuries was 
wrapt up in the institution of Bishops, Priests, and Deacons ; 
but it could not have been deemed altogether strange, in an 
age that still caught the echoes of that contest which convulsed 
the early Christian society, between the last expiring efforts of 
the popular element of the Church and the first germ of the 
rule of the clergy. 

Again, the rise of the first edifice of Christian worship, not 
out of the Jewish Temple, nor even the Jewish Synagogue, 
The secular but out of the Roman hall of justice, may be re- 
ongin of garded as no inapt illustration of another fact of 

Christian © m _ r . 

usages. early Christian history. We are oiten reminded by 

the polemics of opposite schools of the identity of early Chris- 
tian customs and institutions with those of the older dispensa- 

inside, and the wish to consider it as a tomb (see Chapter XI.). What was 
therefore once its universal material has since then been absolutely forbidden 
in the Roman Church. It was also commonly placed in the middle of the 
apse of the church. The modern practice of its attachment to the eastern 
wall was absolutely unknown. Its ancient name was " the Table," by which 
it is still always called in the East. (See Chapter III.) 



THE BASILICA. ' 167 

tion. Few topics have been more popular in modern times, 
whether in praise or blame, than the Judaic character of the 
worship, ministry, and teaching of the three first centuries. 
But the indisputable share which the Gentile world has had in 
the material buildings of the Christian Church, suggests a 
doubt whether it may not have also contributed something 
to the no less complex structure of its moral fabric. The influ- 
ence of Judaism on the first century was undoubtedly very 
great. On the one hand, the early sects had all more or less 
something of a Judaizing character; on the other hand, even 
the Apostles could not have been what they were had they not 
been Jews. But the fall of Jerusalem was in truth the fall of 
the Jewish world; it was a reason for the close of the Apostolic 
age — a death-blow to the influence of the Jewish nationality 
for a long time to come on the future fortunes of the world at 
large. Something, no doubt, both of its form and spirit, lin- 
gered on, in the institutions of that great society which sprung 
out of its ruins; but however much the mere ceremonial 
and superficial aspect of the Patristic age may bear a Jewish 
physiognomy, it is to the influences at work in the social fabric 
of the Roman Empire itself, that we must seek the true springs 
of action in the Christian Church, — so far as they came from any 
foreign source. It is therefore with something more than a 
mere artistical interest that we find the Bishop seated on the 
chair of the Praetor — the forms of the cathedral already wrapt 
up in the halls of JEmilius and of Trajan. It is in accordance 
not only with the more general influence to which the Christian 
society was exposed, from the rhetorical subtleties, the magical 
superstitions, the idolatrous festivals, and the dissolute habits 
of the heathen world at large, but also with the more especial 
influence which the purely political spirit of the Roman State 
exercised over some of their most peculiar institutions — with 
the fact that the very names by which the functions of their 
Dflicers are described sprung not from the religious, but from 
the civil vocabulary of the times, and are expressions not of 
spiritual so much as of political power. " Ordo " (the origin 
of our present "orders") was the well-known name of the 
municipal senates of the empire ; " ordinatio " (the original of 
our "ordination") was never used by the Romans except for 
civil appointments; the "tribunes of the people" are the like- 



• 168 CHRISTIAN INSTITUTIONS. 

ness which the historian of the "Decline and Fall" recognizes 
in the early Christian Bishops ; the preponderance of the Gentile 
spirit of government and the revival of the spirit of the Roman 
Senate in the counsels of Cyprian was the thought which forced 
itself on the mind of the last English historian of Rome. The 
Church of Rome developed thus early the idea of authority 
and subordination. Evils and abuses innumerable no doubt 
flowed from the excess of this influence of the Christian Church, 
but in itself it was a true instinct, which no arguments about 
the contrast of civil and spiritual power were able completely 
to extinguish.* The free spirit of the Roman citizen felt that 
it could breathe nowhere so freely as in the bosom of the Chris- 
tian society. The Christian minister felt that no existing 
office or title to power was so solemn as that of the Roman 
magistrate ; and it was a striking act of homage to the great- 
ness of the Empire that by an instinct, however unconscious, 
the hall of Roman justice should not have been deemed too 
secular for a place of Christian worship. 

Yet once more, we have seen how the very name of Basilica 
leads our thoughts back to the period of Roman greatness and 
The use of Grecian refinement, how naturally the several parts 
art - of the heathen and the secular edifice adapted 

themselves to their higher use, how, on the one hand (if we 
take the Christian service, not in its worse, but in its better 
aspect), the den of thieves was changed into the house of 
prayer — the words of heavenly love spoken from the inexorable 
seat of Roman judgment — the halls of wrangling converted 
into the abodes of worship ; — how, on the other hand, the idea 
of the public and social life which the Basilica has brought 
with it from Greece, the idea of an irresistible law and univer- 
sal dominion which had been impressed upon it by the genius 
of Rome, first found their complete development under the 
shadow of that faith which was to preserve them both to the 
new world of Europe. It is possible to trace, in this trans- 
figuration of the ancient images of Gentile power and civiliza- 
tion, a sign, however faint, of the true spirit of that faith 
which here found an outward expression. Had unrestrained 



* See Renan's Hibbert Lectures on the Influence of Borne on Christianity 
and the Catholic Church. 



THE BASILICA. 169 

scope been given to the tendency which strove to assimilate all 
Christian worship to the religious ceremonial of Judaism or 
Paganism, it might have perpetuated itself by adopting in all 
cases, as it certainly did in some, the type, if not of the Roman, 
at least of the Jewish temple. Had the stern indifference to 
all forms of arts prevailed everywhere, and at all times, during 
the first three centuries, as it did during the ages of persecution 
and in the deserts of the Thebaid, it would probably have 
swept away outward localities and forms of worship altogether. 
A higher spirit, undoubtedly, than either of these tendencies 
represent, there has always been in the Christian Church, 
whether latent or expressed; — a spirit which would make 
religion to consist not in the identification of things with itself 
nor yet in a complete repudiation of them — but in its compre- 
hension and appropriation of them to its own uses; — which 
would look upon the world neither as too profane, nor too 
insignificant, for the regard of Christians, but rather as the 
very sphere in which Christianity \z to live and to triumph. 
To what extent such a spirit may have coexisted with all the 
counteracting elements which it must have met in the age of 
Constantine, we do not pretend to say : but if the view above 
given be correct, it is precisely such a spirit as this which is 
represented to us in outward form by the origin of the Chris- 
tian Basilica. It is precisely such a monument as best befitted 
the first public recognition of a religion whose especial claim it 
was that it embraced not one nation only, nor one element 
of human nature only, but all the nations and all the various 
elements of the whole world. The Gothic Cathedral may have 
had its origin quite independently of its precursors in Italy, 
and may have been a truer exponent of the whole range of 
Christian feeling ; but neither it, nor any other form of Archi- 
tecture could have won its way into the Christian world, unless 
the rise of the Basilioa had first vindicated the application 
of Gentile art, whether Roman or Teutonic, to sacred purposes. 
The selection of the Halls of Justice may have been occasioned 
by merely temporary and accidental causes ; but the mere fact 
of the selection of such sites or such models, unhallowed by 
ancient tradition, or primeval awe, was in itself a new phenom- 
enon — was in itself the sign that a Religion was come into the 
world, confident of its own intrinsic power of consecrating 
8 



170 CHRISTIAN INSTITUTIONS. 

whatever it touched, independently of any outward or external 
relation whatever. 

A similar tendency may be perceived in the subsequent 
adaptation of the successive styles of mediaeval and classical 
structures of Christian and Protestant worship. The gathering 
of large masses in the nave or the transepts of cathedrals, 
of which only a small portion had been, properly speaking, 
devoted to religious uses, is an instance of these edifices lend- 
ing themselves to purposes for which they were not originally 
intended. But of all such examples, the Basilica is the earliest 
and the most striking, 



THE CLERGY. yt\ 



CHAPTER X. 

THE CLERGY. 

It is proposed to state briefly the early constitution of the 
Christian clergy.* 

I. It is certain that the officers of the Apostolical, or of any 
subsequent, Church were not part of the original institution of 
the Founder of our religion ; that of Bishop, Presbyter, and 
Deacon, of Metropolitan, Patriarch, and Pope, there is not the 
shadow of a trace in the four Gospels. It is certain that 
they arose gradually out of the pre-existing institutions either 
of the Jewish Synagogue, or of the Roman Empire, or of the 
Greek municipalities, or under the pressure of local emergen- 
cies. It is certain that throughout the first century, and for 
the first years of the second, that is, through the later chapters 
of the Acts, the Apostolical Epistles, and the writings of Clem- 
ent and Hennas, Bishop and Presbyter were convertible terms, 
and that the body of men so called were the rulers — so far 
as any permanent rulers existed^of the early Church. It is 
certain that as the necessities of the time demanded, first at 
Jerusalem, then in Asia Minor, the elevation of one Presby- 
ter above the rest by the almost universal law, which even 
in republics engenders a monarchical element, the word 
"Bishop" gradually changed its meaning, and by the middle 
of the second century became restricted to the chief Presbyter 
of the locality. It is certain that in no instance were the 
Apostles called " Bishops " in any' other sense than they were 

-i,I T A he Pr°£ fs 1 0f JL hat , i , s . here stat ed have been given before in the essay " On 
0^ ^Postohcal Office." in Sermons and Essays on the Apostolical Age. and 
are therefore not repeated here. And it is the less necessary, because they 
liava been m later times elaborated at great length and with the most con- 
fit™"^^ 6 ^ 8 £? £ lsh °P Ligntfoot in his "Essay on the Christian Min- 
It J 7 t> ap E£ nd . ed Jl hls Commentary on the Epistle to the Philipnians. and by 
the Rev. Edwin Hatch m his articles on " Bishop " and " Presbyter " in the 
Uictionary of Christian Antiquities, as well as in his more recent Bampton 
Lectures. These may be consulted for any further detail. 



172 CHRISTIAN INSTITUTIONS. 

equally called " Presbyters " and " Deacons." It is certain 
that in no instance before the beginning of the third century 
the title or function of the Pagan or Jewish Priesthood is ap- 
plied to the Christian pastors. From these facts result general 
conclusions of general interest. 

1. It is important to observe how with the recognition of 
this gradual growth and change of the early names and offices 

ft f °^ ^ e ^ Dr ^ st i an ministry, ■ the long and fierce con- 
Bishop and troversy between Presbyterianism and Episcopacy, 
Presbyter, which continued from the sixteenth to the first part 
of the nineteenth century, has entirely lost its significance. It 
is as sure that nothing like modern Episcopacy existed before 
the close of the first century as it is that nothing like modern 
Presbyterianism existed after the beginning of the second. 
That which was once the Gordian knot of theologians has at 
least in this instance been untied, not by the sword of persecu- 
tion, but by the patient unravelment of scholarship. No exist- 
ing church can find any pattern or platform of its government 
in those early times. Churches, like States, have not to go 
back to a state of barbarism to justify their constitu- 
tion. It has been the misfortune of Churches, that, unlike 
States, there has been on all sides equally a disposition either 
) to assume the existence in early days of all the later princi- 
ples of civilization, or else to imagine a primitive state of 
things which never existed at all. 

2. These formations or transformations of the Christian 
ministry were drawn from the contemporary usages of society. 
The Deacons were the most original of the institutions, being 
Origin of the invented, as it were, for the special emergency in the 
Orders. Church of Jerusalem. But the Presbyters were the 
" sheikhs," the elders — those who by seniority had reached the 
first rank — in the Jewish Synagogue. The Bishops were the 
same, viewed under another aspect — the "inspectors," the 
"auditors," of the Grecian churches.* These words bear tes- 
timony to the fact (as significant of the truly spiritual charac- 
ter of Christianity as it is alien to its magical character) that 
the various orders of the Christian ministry point to their 
essentially lay origin and their affinity with the great secular 

* See the authorities quoted in Renan, St. Paul, 239. 



TEE CLEBGY. 173 

world, of which the elements had been pronounced from the 
beginning of Christianity to be neither "common nor un- 
clean." 

3. It is interesting to observe the relics of the primitive con- 
dition of the Church, which have survived through all the 
changes of time. 

The Bishop, in the second century, when first he became 
elevated above his fellow Presbyters, appears for a time to 
have concentrated in himself all the functions 
which they had hitherto exercised. If they had theprimi- 
hitherto been coequal Bishops he gradually became tlve usa s es - 
almost sole Presbyter. He alone could baptize, consecrate, 
confirm, ordain, marry, preach, absolve. But this exclusive 
monopoly has never been fully conceded. In almost every one 
of these cases the Presbyters have either not altogether lost or 
have recovered some of their ancient privileges. In all Churches 
the exclusive absorption of the privileges of the Presbyters into 
the hands of the Bishop has been either resisted or modified 
by occasional retention of the old usages. Everywhere Pres- 
byters have successfully reasserted the power of consecrating, 
baptizing, marrying, and absolving. Everywhere, except in 
the English Church, they have, in special cases, claimed the 
right of confirming. Everywhere they have, with the Bishop, 
retained a share in the right of ordaining Presbyters. At 
Alexandria they long retained the right of ordaining Bishops.* 

We commonly speak of three Orders, and the present eleva- 
tion of Bishops has fully justified that phrase ; but according 
to the strict rules of the Church, derived from those early 
times, there are but two — Presbyters and Deacons. \ The Ab- 
bots of the Middle Ages represent in the Episcopal Churches 
the Presbyterian element — independent of the jurisdiction of 
Bishops, and equal to them in all that concerned outward dig- 
nity. 

4. Of all the offices in the early Church, that of Deacon was 



* See Lectures on the Eastern Church (Lecture VII.); Bishop Lightfoot, 
41 The Christian Ministry," in Commentary on the Philippians, pp. 2^8-236. 

t It would seem that in those centuries the chief pastor of every city was a 
Bishop, and those who looked after the villages in the surrounding district 
were called country bishops (x^peirLa-Koiroip); whether Presbyters or Bishops 
in the later sense is a question which, from the identity of the two Orders, it 
is impossible to determine with certainty. 



174 CHRISTIAN INSTITUTIONS. 

subjected to the most extreme changes. Their origin (if, as is 
The Dea- probable, we must identify them more or less with 
cons. the Seven in the Acts) is the only part of the institu- 

tion of the Christian ministry of which we have a full descrip- 
tion.* It was the oldest ecclesiastical function; the most 
ancient of the Holy Orders. It was grounded on the eleva- 
tion of the care of the poor to the rank of a religious service. 
It was the proclamation of the truth that social questions are 
to take the first place amongst religious instruction. It was 
the recognition of political economy as part of religious knowl- 
edge. The Deacons became the first preachers of Christianity. 
They were the first Evangelists, because they were the first to 
find their way to the homes of the poor. They were the con- 
structors of the most solid and durable of the institutions of 
Christianity, namely, the institutions of charity and benefi- 
cence. Women as well as men were enrolled in the order. 
They were district-visitors, lay-helpers on the largest scale. 
Nothing shows the divergence between it and the modern 
Order of Deacon more completely than the divergence of 
numbers. In the Greek, Roman, and English Churches, and, 
it may be added, in the Presbyterian Churches, there are as 
many Deacons as Presbyters. But in the early Church the 
Presbyters were the many, the Deacons the few, and their 
fewness made their office not the smallest but the proudest 
office and prize in the Church. \ 

The only institution which retains at once the name and 
the reality is the Diaconate as it exists in the Dutch Church. 
The seven Deacons of Rome exist as a shadow in the Cardinal 
Deacons of the Sacred College of Rome, but only as a shadow. 
They were the seven chaplains or officers of the Church. 
Their head was an acknowledged potentate of the first magni- 
tude. He was the Archdeacon. Such was Lawrence at 
Rome, such was Athanasius at Alexandria, such was the Arch- 
deacon of Canterbury in England. If any one were asked 
who was the first ecclesiastic of Western Christendom, he 
would naturally and properly say, the Bishop of Rome. But 



* Renan, Les Apotres, pp. 120-122. 

+ Jerome, Epist. ad Evagrium; Thomassin, Vetus et Nova Disciplina, i. II. 
89. 



THE CLERGY. 175 

the second is not an archbishop, not a cardinal, but the Arch- 
deacon of Rome. Till the eleventh century this was so 
absolutely. That office was last filled by Hildebrand, and in 
the deed of consecration of the Church of Monte Casino, his 
name succeeds immediately to that of the Pope, and is suc- 
ceeded by that of the Bishop of Ostia. Since his time the 
office has been rarely filled, and has been virtually abolished.* 

5. Before the conversion of the Empire, Bishops and Pres- 
byters alike were chosen by the whole mass of the people f in 
the parish or the diocese (the words at that time Appoint- 
were almost interchangeable). The election of ment - 
Damasus at Rome, of Gregery at Constantinople, of Ambrose 
at Milan, and of Chrysostom at Constantinople are decisive 
proofs of this practice. There were, no doubt, attempts in 
particular instances to modify these popular elections, some- 
times by the bishops, as in Egypt, against the Melitians in the 
Council of Nicsea, sometimes as at Rome, of the leading clergy 
of the place, which gave birth to the College of Cardinals, but 
ultimately in every case by the influence of the sovereign, first 
of the Emperor, and then of the several princes of Europe. 

6. The form of consecration or ordination varied. In the 
Alexandrian and Abyssinian Churches it was, and still is, by 
breathing; in the Eastern Church generally by lift- Form f 
ing up the hands in the ancient oriental attitude of consecra- 
benediction ; in the Armenian Church, as also at tlon * 
times in the Alexandrian Church, by the dead hand of the 
predecessor ; in the early Celtic Church, by the transmission 
of relics or pastoral staff; in the Latin Church by the form of 
touching the head, which has been adopted from it by all 
Protestant Churches. No one mode was universal ; no written 
formula of ordination exists. That by which the Presbyters 
of the Western Church are ordained is not later than the 
twelfth century, and even that varies widely in the place 
assigned to it in the Roman and in the English Churches.J 

7. Of the ordinary ministrations of the early clergy it is 



* Thomassin, Vetus et Nova Disciplina, I. lib. ii. c. 20, s. 3. The Archdeacon 
of Constantinople ceased about the same time. The first instance of a Pres- 
byter Archdeacon is a.d. 874. 

t By show of hands (vetpoTovia). Kenan's St. Paul, p. 238. 

X See Chapter VH. 



176 CHRISTIAN INSTITUTIONS. 

difficult to form any conception. One rule, however, is known 
to have regulated their condition, which every Church in 
Christendom has since rejected except the Abyssinian. It was 
positively forbidden in the fourth century, evidently in con- 
formity with prevailing usage, for any Bishop, Presbyter, or 
Deacon, to leave the parish or diocese in which he had been 
originally placed. 

The clergy were, as a general rule, married ; and though in 
the Eastern Church this long ceased as regards Bishops, and 
in the Latin Church altogether, in the Church of the three first 
centuries it was universal. 

The regulations in the Pastoral Epistles, which are under 
any hypothesis the earliest documents or laws describing the 
duties of the clergy, dwell very slightly * on the office of 
teaching, do not even mention the sacraments, and are for the 
most part confined to matters of conduct and sobriety. The 
teaching functions were added to those of government as the 
Christian Church grew in intelligence, and have varied with 
the circumstances of the age. The present Eastern Church, 
though once abounding in them, is now almost entirely with- 
out them ; in the Western Church they have never been 
altogether absent; in the Protestant churches they have 
almost absorbed all others. But in all, unlike the Jewish and 
Pagan Priesthoods, the intellectual and pastoral attributes have 
been in theory predominant, and have been the main-stay of 
the office. 

II. From these changes two conclusions follow. 

1. In the first beginning of Christianity there was no such 
institution as the clergy, and it is conceivable that there may 

The rowth ^ e a ^ me wnen th e y sna ^ cease to be. But though 
of the the office of the Christian ministry was not one of 

c ergy. ^ Q original and essential elements of the Christian 

religion, yet it grew naturally out of the want which was 
created. There was a kind of natural necessity for the growth 
of the clergy in order to meet the increasing needs of the 
Christian community. Just as kings and judges and soldiers 
sprang up to suit the wants of civil society, so the clergy 



* The only expression which bears upon teaching in the catalogue of a 
Bishop's (or Presbyter's) duties in 1 Tim. iii. 2-7, is " apt to teach " (fitfia/cn/eds) 
In ver. 7, and in Tit. i. ii. the expressions used in ver. 9. 



THE CLERGY. 177 

sprang up to meet the wants of religious society. Even in 
those religious communities which have endeavored to dispense 
with such an order it has reasserted itself in other forms. The 
Mussulman religion, properly speaking, admits of no clergy. 
But the legal profession has very nearly taken their place. 
The Mufti and the Imam are religious quite as much as they 
are civil authorities. The English Society of Friends, although 
they acknowledge no separate Order, yet have always had 
well-known accredited teachers, who are to them as the Popes 
and Pastors of their community. 

The intellectual element in the Christian society will always 
require some one to express it, and this, in some form or 
another, will probably be the clergy, or, as Coleridge expressed 
it, the " Clerisy." The mechanical part of the office, which 
was characteristic of the Priest, did not belong to the office in 
early Christian times. The " elders " were derived from the 
Jewish synagogue, but it was the excellence of Christianity to 
inspire them with a new life, to make them fill a new place, to 
make them occupy all the vacant opportunities of good that 
this world offers. 

2. It has been said that the Christian Church or Society 
existed before the institution of the Christian clergy. In like 
manner the Christian clergy existed before the origin of 
institution of Christian Bishops. In the first age Episcopacy, 
there was no such marked distinction as now we find between 
the different orders of the clergy. It was only by slow 
degrees that the name of Bishop became appropriated to one 
chief pastor raised high in rank and station above the mass of 
the clergy. But here, again, it was the demand which created 
the supply. The demand for distinction and inequality of 
officers arose from the fact that there is in human nature a 
distinction and inequality of gifts. If all clergymen were 
equal in character and power, there would be no place for 
inequality of rank or station amongst them. It is because, 
like other men, they are unequally gifted, because there are 
from time to time amongst them, as amongst others, men who 
have been endowed with superior natures, that Episcopacy 
exists and will always exist, in substance, if not in form, but 
often in form also, because the substance of the character 
claims an outward form in which to embody itself. Doubt- 

8* 



178 CHRISTIAN INSTITUTIONS. 

less there have been times when the clergy and the Church 
were able to effect their great objects in the world without the 
aid of higher officers ; just as there have been battles which 
have been won by the rank and file of soldiers without the 
aid, or even in spite, of generals. But still the more usual 
experience of mankind has proved that in all conditions of 
life there are men who rise above their fellows, and who there- 
fore need corresponding offices in which these more command- 
ing gifts may find a place ; and who by the development of 
those gifts through the higher offices are themselves a standing 
proof that the offices are necessary. Even in the Apostolic 
age, before the existence of what we now call Bishops, and 
when the word Bishop was synonymous with Presbyter or 
Elder, there were forward and gifted disciples, like Timotheus 
and Titus, who took the lead. Even in Presbyterian Churches 
we see again and again men who by their superior character 
and attainments are Bishops in all but in name, and who only 
need such offices to call out their full energies. There exist 
Episcopal Churches, such as those in Greece and Italy, where 
the Bishops have been so numerous that, as in early times, 
they have been but Presbyters with another name. But in 
England, and in former days in Germany, they have always 
been comparatively few in number, and it is this rarity, this 
exaltation, which causes that agreement of the office with the 
natural fitness of things. 

III. In what sense can the institution of the Clergy or of 

s Bishops be said to have a divine origin ? Not in the sense of its 

Th ■ • • nav i n g been directly and visibly established by the 

Founder of Christianity. Amongst the gifts which 

our Lord gave to mankind during His life on earth, the Christian 

Lj ministry, as we now possess it, is not one. He gave us during 
the years of His earthly manifestation, that which was far 
greater — which was in fact Christianity — He gave us Him- 
self — Himself in His life, in His death, in His mind, in His 
character, in His immortal life in which He lives forever — 
Himself, with the immediate impression of Himself on the 
characters and memories of those His friends and disciples 
who stood immediately around Him, and who carried on the 
impulse which they derived from personal contact with Him. 
But no permanent order of ministers appears in that spiritual 



THE CLERGY. 179 

kingdom of which He spoke on the hills of Galilee or on the 
slopes of Olivet. The Twelve Apostles whom He chose had 
no successors like themselves. No second Peter, no second 
John, no second Paul stepped into the places of those who 
had seen the Lord Jesus ; and if their likenesses have been in 
any measure seen again in later times, it has been at long inter- 
vals, few and far between, when great lights have been raised 
up to rekindle amongst men the expiring flame of truth and 
goodness by extraordinary gifts of genius or of grace. The 
Seventy Disciples that went forth at the Lord's command into 
the cities of Palestine were soon gathered to their graves, and 
no order of the same kind or of the same number came in 
their stead. They went out once, and returned back to their 
Master, to go out no more. The Church, the Christian Society, 
existed in those faithful followers, even from the beginning, 
and will doubtless last to the very end. Wherever, in any 
time or country, two or three are gathered together by a com- 
mon love and faith, there will be a Christian Church. But 
even for years after the Lord's departure, such a society exist- 
ed without a separate order of clergy. The whole Christian 
brotherhood was full of life, and there was as yet no marked 
distinction between its different portions. All were alike holy 
— all were alike consecrated. Therefore it is that the institu- 
tion of the Christian ministry has never been placed in any 
ancient Creed amongst the fundamental facts or doctrines of 
the Gospel ; therefore it is that (in the language of the English 
Church) ordination is not a sacrament, because it has no visible 
sign or ceremony ordained by Christ Himself. 

Yet there is another sense in which the Christian ministry 
is a gift of our Divine Master. It is brought out in the 
well-known passage in the Epistle to the Ephesians : " When 
He ascended up on high, He led captivity captive, and 
gave gifts unto men. .... And He gave some to be 
apostles, and some to be prophets, and some to be evange- 
lists, and some to be shepherds and teachers." * What 
is it that is meant by saying that it was only after His 
withdrawal from us, that He gave these gifts to men, and that 
amongst these gifts were the various offices, of which two at 



Eph. iv. 8-11. 



180 CHRISTIAN INSTITUTIONS. 

least (the pastoral and the intellectual) contain the germs of 
all the future clergy of Christendom ? It is this — that not in 
His earthly life, not in His direct communion with men, not 
as part of the original manifestation of Christianity, but (so to 
speak) as a Divine afterthought, as the result of the complex 
influences which were showered down upon the earth after its 
Founder had left it, as a part of the vast machinery of Chris- 
tian civilization, were the various professions of Christendom 
formed, and amongst these the great vocation of the Christian 
ministry. 

The various grades of the Christian clergy have sprung up 
in Christian society in the same ways, and by the same divine, 
because the same natural, necessity, as the various grades of 
government, law, and science — a necessity only more urgent, 
more universal, and therefore more divine, in so far as the 
religious and intellectual wants of mankind are of a more gen- 
eral, of a mora simple, and therefore of a more divine kind 
than their social and physical wants. All of them vary, in 
each age or country, according to the varieties of age and 
country — according to the civil constitution, according to the 
geographical area, according to the climate and custom of 
east and west, north and south. "We find popular election, 
clerical election*, imperial election, ministerial election, ordina- 
tion by breathing, ordination by sacred relics, ordination by 
elevation of hands, ordination by imposition of hands, vest- 
ments and forms derived from Roman civil life, or from a 
peculiar profession from this or that school, of this or that 
fashion — spheres more or less limited, a humbls country vil- 
lage, an academic cloister, a vast town population, or a prov- 
ince as large as a kingdom. The enumeration of these varie- 
ties is not a condemnation, but a justification, of their exist- 
ence. The Christian clergy has grown with the growth and 
varied with the variations of Christian society, and the more 
complex, the more removed from the rudeness and simplicity 
of the early ages, the more likely they are to be in accordance 
with truth and reason, which is the mind of Christ. 

This, therefore, is the divine and the human side of the 
Christian ministry. Divine, because it belongs to the inevitable 
growth of Christian hopes and sympathies, of increasing truth, 
of enlarging charity. Human, because it arose out of, and is 



THE CLERGY. 181 

Subject to, the vicissitudes of^ human passions, human ignor- 
ance, human infirmities, earthly opportunities. In so far as it 
has a permanent and divine character, it has a pledge of im- 
mortal existence, so long as Christian society exists with its 
peculiar wants and aspirations ; in so far as it has a human 
character, it seeks to accommodate itself to the wants of each 
successive age, and needing the support, and the sympathy, 
and the favor, of all the other elements of social intercourse by 
which it is surrounded. It has been at times so degraded that 
it has become the enemy of all progress. It has been at times 
in the forefront of civilization. 



182 CHRISTIAN INSTITUTIONS. 



CHAPTER XL 

THE POPE. 

Three hundred years ago there were three official person- 
ages in Europe of supreme historical interest, of whom one is 
gone, and two survive, though in a reduced and enfeebled 
form. 

The three were the Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, 
the Pope of Rome, and the Sultan of Constantinople. They 
were alike in this, that they combined a direct descent of 
association from the old classical world with an important 
position in the modern world, — a high secular with a high 
ecclesiastical position, — a strong political influence with a per- 
sonal authority of an exceptional kind. 

The Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire was the greatest 
sovereign in Europe. He was, in fact, properly speaking, the 
Emperor of only sovereign of Europe. Other kings and princes 
Roman^Em- W( ^re, in strict parlance, his deputies. He was the 
pire'. fountain of honor whence they derived their titles. 

He took precedence of them all. He was the representative 
of the old Roman Empire. In him, the highest intelligences 
of the time saw the representative of order, the counter- 
poise of individual tyranny, the majesty at once of Religion 
and of Law. No other single potentate so completely sug- 
gested the idea of Christendom as a united body. No 
throne in Europe presented in its individual rulers person- 
ages of grander character, or at least of grander power than 
the Empire could boast in Charlemagne, Frederick Bar- 
barossa, Frederick II., and Charles V. Long before this splen- 
did dignitary passed away, his real power was gone, and Vol- 
taire had truly declared of him that there was in him " nothing 
Holy, nothing Roman, and nothing Imperial." But it was not 
till our own time, in 1806, when the Holy Roman Empire was 
changed into the Empire of Austria, that he finally disappeared 
from the stage of human affairs. The Emperor of Germany, 



TEE POPE. 183 

as regards Germany, took the vacant place in 1871, but not as 
regards Europe. 

The two others remain. They in many respects resemble 
each other and their defunct brother, perhaps in the fragility 
of their thrones, certainly in the concentrated inter- 
est of their historical, political, and religious posi- 
tion. The Sultan perhaps comprises in his own person most 
of the original characteristics of the institution which he repre- 
sents. He is at once the representative of the Byzantine 
Caesars and the representative of the last of the Caliphs, that 
is, of the Prophet himself. He is the chief of a mighty em- 
pire, and at the same time the head of a powerful and wide- 
spread religion. Of all the three, he is the one whose person 
is invested with the most inviolable sanctity. His temporal 
dominion in Europe has almost vanished. But he still retains 
" the Palaces and the Gardens " of the Bosphorus, and his 
ecclesiastical authority over his co-religionists remains undis- 
turbed if not undisputed. 

It is of the third of this august brotherhood that we pro- 
pose to speak. The Papacy is now passing through a phase 
in some degree resembling that of the Holy Roman 
Emperor in 1806, and that of the Sultan of Con- 
stantinople at the present moment. But its peculiarities are 
too deeply rooted in the past to be entirely shaken by any 
transitory change. 

It is not as an object of attack or defence that this great 
dignitary is here discussed, but as a mine of deep and curious 
interest — the most ancient of all the rulers of Europe. He 
presents many aspects, each one of which might be taken by 
itself and viewed without prejudice to the others. Some of 
these are purely historical. Others are political and secular. 
Others involve questions reaching into difficult problems of 
religion and theology. They may be briefly enumerated 
thus: 

The Pope may be considered — I. As the representative of 
the customs of Christian antiquity; II. As the representative 
of the ancient Roman Empire ; III. As an Italian Bishop and 
Italian Prince ; IV. As " the Pope," or chief oracle of Chris- 
tendom ; V. As the head of the ecclesiastical profession ; VI. 
As an element in the future arrangements of Christendom. 



184 CHBISTIAN INSTITUTIONS. 

I. The Pope is a representative of Christian antiquity. In 
The Pope as ^ s res P ec ^ he is a perfect museum of ecclesiastical 
the repre- curiosities — a mass, if we wish so to regard him, 
Christian 011 o£ latent primitive Protestantism. In him, from 
antiquity. the high dignity and tenaciously conservative ten- 
dencies of the office, customs endured which everywhere else 
perished. 

The public entrance of that great personage into one of the 
Roman churches, at the time when such processions were 
allowed by ecclesiastical authority, can never be forgotten. 
Borne aloft above the surface of the crowd — seen from head to 
foot — the peacock fans waving behind him — the movement of 
the hand alone indicating that it is a living person, and not a 
waxen figure — he completely represented the identification of 
the person with the institution; he gave the impression that 
there alone was an office which carried the mind back to the 
times, as Lord Macaulay says, when tigers and camelopards 
bounded in the Flavian amphitheatre. 

1. Take his ordinary dress. He always appears in a white 
gown. He is, according to a well-known Roman proverb, 
" the White Pope," in contradistinction to the more 
formidable " Black Pope," the General of the order 
of the Jesuits, who wears a black robe. This white dress is 
the white frock of the early Christians,* such as we see in the 
oldest mosaics, before the difference between lay and clerical 
costume had sprung up, not the " surplice " of the Church of 
England, nor the " white linen robe " of the Jewish priest, but 
the common classical dress of all ranks in Roman society. To 
this common white garb the early Christians adhered with 
more than usual tenacity, partly to indicate their cheerful, 
festive character, as distinct from mourners who went in black, 
partly to mark their separation from the peculiar black dress 
of the philosophical sects with which they were often con- 
founded. The Pope thus carries on the recollection of an age 
when there was no visible distinction between the clergy and 
laity ; he shows, at any rate, in his own person, the often 
repeated but often forgotten fact, that all ecclesiastical costumes 
have originated in the common dress of the time, and been 

* Gerbet, Rome Chr6tienne, ii. 44. 



THE POPE. 185 

merely perpetuated in the clergy, or in this case in the head of 
the clergy, from their longer adherence to ancient habits. 

2. Take his postures. At the reception of the Holy Com- 
munion, whilst others kneel, his proper attitude is that of 
sitting; and, although it has been altered of late Hispos- 
years, he still so stands as to give the appearance of tur es. 
sitting.* It is possible that this may have been continued out 
of deference to his superior dignity ; but it is generally believed, 
and it is very probable, that in that attitude he preserves the 
tradition of the primitive posture of the early Christians, who 
partook of the Holy Supper in the usual attitude of guests at 
a meal — recumbent or sitting, as the case might be. This has 
now been exchanged throughout a large part of Christendom 
for a more devotional attitude, — in the East for standing, in 
the West for kneeling. The Pope still retains in part or in 
whole the posture of the first Apostles ; and in this he is fol- 
lowed by the Presbyterians of Scotland and the Non-conformists 
of England, who endeavor by this act to return to that which, 
in the Pope himself, has never been entirely abandoned. It 
brings before us the ancient days when the Sacrament was still 
a supper, when the communicants were still guests, when the 
altar was still a table. 

3. This leads us to another custom retained in the Pope 
from the same early time. The Pope, when he celebrates 
mass in his own cathedral of St. John Lateran, cele- 

brates it, not on a structure of marble or stone, such 
as elsewhere constitutes the altars of Roman Catholic churches, 
but on a wooden plank, said to be part of the table on which 
St. Peter in the house of Pudens consecrated the first com- 
munion in Rome. This primitive wooden table — the mark of 
the original social character of the Lord's Supper — has been 
preserved throughout the East; and in most Protestant 
Churches, including the Church of England, was restored at 
the Reformation. But it is interesting to find this indisputa- 
ble proof of its antiquity and catholicity preserved in the very 
heart of the see of Rome. Some persons have been taught to 
regard stone altars as identical with Popery ; some to regard 
them as necessary for Christian worship. The Pope, by this 

1 See note at the end of the chapter. 



186 CHRISTIAN INSTITUTIONS. 

usage of the old wooden table, equally contradicts both. The 
real change from wood to stone was occasioned in the first 
instance, not by the* substitution of the idea of an altar for a 
table, but by the substitution of a tomb, containing the relics 
of a martyr, for both altar and table. 

4. Again, when the Pope celebrates mass, he stands, not 
with his back to the people, nor at the north end, nor at the 

northwest side, of the table, but behind it with his 
back to the wall, and facing the congregation. 
This is the exact reverse of the position of the Roman Catholic 
clergy generally, and of those who would wish especially to 
imitate them. It much more nearly resembles the position of 
Presbyterian and Non-conformist ministers at the time of the 
Holy Communion, when they stand at one side of the table, 
facing the congregation, who are on the other side. It was 
the almost necessary consequence of the arrangement of the 
original Basilica, where the altar stood, not at the east end, but 
in the middle of the building, the central point between clergy 
and laity. It represents, of course, what must have been the 
position in the original institution as seen in pictures of the 
Last Supper. It is also the position which prevailed in the 
Church of England for the first hundred years after the Refor- 
mation, and till some years after the Restoration, and is still 
directly enjoined in the rubrics of the English Prayer Book. 
The position of a Presbyterian minister at the time of the cel- 
ebration of the Lord's Supper, either as he stands in the pul- 
pit, or when descending he takes his place behind the table, 
with his elders around him, precisely resembles the attitude of 
an early Christian bishop surrounded by his presbyters.* 

Here again Protestantism, or, if we prefer to call it so, prim- 
itive Christianity, appears in the Pope, when it has perished 
on all sides of him. 

5. Another peculiarity of the Pope's celebration of mass 
gives us a glimpse into a phase of the early Church which is 
His lan- highly instructive. The Gospel and Epistle are read 
guage. both in Greek and Latin. This is a vestige doubt- 
less of the early condition of the first Roman Church, which, 
as Dean Milman has well pointed out, was not an Italian but a 

* See Chapter IX. 



TEE POPE. 187 

Greek community — the community to which, as being Greek 
and Oriental, St. Paul wrote, not in Latin but in Greek ; the 
community of which the first teachers — Clement and Ilcrmas — 
wrote, not in Latin but in Greek. It preserves the curious and 
instructive fact that the chief of Latin Christendom was origi- 
nally not an " Italian priest " but an alien ; a Greek in language, 
an Oriental in race. It gives us an insight into the foreign 
elements out of which the early Western Churches everywhere 
were formed. It is, in fact, a remnant of a state of things not 
later than the third century. Before that time the sacred 
language of the Roman Church was Greek. After that time, 
Greek gave way to Latin, and by the fifth century the Roman 
clergy were not even able to understand the tongue which to 
their forefathers in the faith had been sacred and liturgical, 
whilst the language of the " Vulgate" and the " Canon of the 
Mass " was still profane.* 

6. Again, in the Pope's private chapel, and on all occasions 
when the Pope himself officiates, there is a total absence of 
instrumental music. This, too, is a continuation of 
the barbaric simplicity of the early Christian service. 
The Roman Catholic ritual, as well as that of the Protestant 
Churches of Holland, Germany, France, Switzerland, and Eng- 
land, have joined in defying this venerable precedent. In two 
branches only of the Church outside the Pope's chapel it still 
lingers; namely, in the worship of the Eastern churches and in 
some of the Presbyterian Churches of Scotland. At Moscow 
and at Glasgow still there are places where' the sound of an 
organ would»be regarded as a blast from the Seven Hills. But, 
in fact, the Pope himself is on this point a Greek and a Pres- 
byterian, and in this refusal of the accompaniments of the 
sublime arts of modern music, is at one with those who have 
thrown off his allegiance and protest against the practices of 
those who have accepted it. 

• 7. Again, alone of all great ecclesiastics of his Church, he 
has no crosier, except a small temporary silver one at ordina- 
tions. The simple reason of this is, that being The absence 
borne aloft on the shoulders of his guards, and thus of a crosier. 
not being obliged to walk like other ecclesiastics, he has no 

* Rossi, Roma Sotter, ii. 237. 



188 CHBISTIAN INSTITUTIONS. 

need of a walking-stick. This at once reveals the origin of the 
formidable crosier, — not the symbol of the priesthood against 
the state, — not even the crool£ of the pastor over his flock, but 
simply the walking-stick, the staff of the old man, of the pres- 
byter, such as appears in the ancient drama of Greece and 
Rome, and in the famous riddle of CEdipus. It puts in a 
vivid form the saying of Pius VII. to a scrupulous Protestant, 
" Surely the blessing of an old man will do you no harm." The 
crosier was the symbol of old age, and of nothing besides.* 

These instances might be multiplied : but they arc sufficient 
to show the interest of the subject. They show how we find 
agreements and differences where we least expect it — how 
innocent and insignificant are some of the ceremonies to which 
we attach most importance — how totally different was the 
primitive state, even of the Roman Church, to that which now 
prevails both in Roman Catholic and Protestant countries. 
They are lessons of charity and of wisdom — of caution and of 
forbearance. In these respects the Pope has acted merely as 
the shoal which, like the island in his own Tiber, has arrested 
the straws of former ages, as they floated down the stream of 
time. 

II. These usages belong to him as a Christian pastor, and 
are the relics of Christian antiquity. But there are others 
,, _ which reveal him to us in another aspect, and which 

theEmper- have drifted down through another channel. No 
ors " saying of ecclesiastical history is more pregnant 

than that in which Hobbes declares that " the Pope is the 
ghost of the deceased Roman Empire, sitting cfowned upon 
the grave thereof." This is the true original basis of his dig- 
nity and power, and it appears even in the minutest details. 

If he were to be regarded only as the successor of St. Peter, 
his chief original seat would, of course, be in the Basilica of 
St. Peter, over the Apostle's grave. But this is not the case. 



* This absence of the crosier has naturally given birth to a brood of false 
symbolical explanations such as have encompassed all these simple observ- 
ances. The legend is, that the Pope lost the crosier because St. Peter sent 
his staff to raise from the dead a disciple at Treves. This disciple afterwards 
became Bishop of Treves; and the Pope therefore, when he enters the diocese 
of Treves, is believed on that occasion to carry the crosier. (St Thomas 
Aquinas, Opp. vol. xiii. 42 ) Another explanation is, that the curve of the 
crook indicates a restraint of the episcopal power, and that, as the Pope has 
no restraint, therefore he has no crook. (Ibid.) 



THE POPE. 189 

St. Peter's church, in regard to the Pope, is merely a chapel of 
gigantic proportions attached to the later residence which the 
Pope adopted under the Vatican Hill. The present magnifi- 
cent church was erected to be the mausoleum of Julius II., of 
which one fragment only — the statue of Moses — remains. The 
Pope's proper see and Cathedral is the Basilica of St. John "in 
the Lateran " — that is, in the Lateran palace which was the 
real and only bequest of Constantine to the Roman Bishop. It 
had been the palace of the Lateran family. From them it 
passed to the Imperial dynasty. In it the Empress Fausta, 
wife of Constantine, usually lived. In it, after Constantino's 
departure to Constantinople, the Roman Bishop dwelt as a 
great Roman noble. In it accordingly is the true Pontifical 
throne, on the platform of which are written the words Hcec 
est papalis sedes el pontificalis. Over its front is inscribed the 
decree, Papal and Imperial, declaring it to be the mother and 
mistress of all churches. In it he takes possession of the See 
of Rome, and of the government of the Pontifical States. 

Although the story of Constantine's abdication to Pope 
Sylvester is one of the fables of the Papacy, yet it has in it 
this truth — that by the retirement of the Emperors to the 
East, they left Rome without a head, and that vacant place 
was naturally and imperceptibly filled by the chief of the 
rising community. To him the splendor and the attributes, 
which properly belonged to the Emperor, were unconsciously 
transferred. 

Here, as in the case of ecclesiastical usages, we trace it in 
the small details which have lingered in him when they have 
perished elsewhere. The chair of state, the sella gestatoria, 
in which the Pope is borne aloft, is the ancient palanquin of 
the Roman nobles, and, of course, of the Roman Princes. 
The red slippers which he wears are the red shoes, campagineSy 
of the Roman Emperor. The kiss which the faithful imprint 
on those shoes is the descendant of the kiss first imprinted on 
the foot of the Emperor Caligula, who introduced it from 
Persia. The fans which go behind him are the punkahs of 
the Eastern Emperors, borrowed from the court of Persia. 

The name by which his highest ecclesiastical character is 
indicated is derived, not from the Jewish High Priest, but 
from the Roman Emperor. The Latinized version of the 



190 CHRISTIAN INSTITUTIONS. 

Jewish High Priest was " Summus Sacerdos." But the Pope 
is "Pontifex Maximus," and the "Pontifex Maximus" was 
a well-known and recognized personage in the eyes of the 
Roman population, long before they had ever heard of the 
race of Aaron or of Caiaphas.* He was the High Pagan 
dignitary who lived in a public residence at the northeast 
corner of the Palatine, the chief of the college of " Pontiffs " 
or " Bridge-makers." It was his duty to conduct all public 
sacrifices, to scourge to death any one who insulted the Vestal 
Virgins, to preside at the assemblies and games, to be present 
at the religious ceremony of any solemn marriage, and to 
arrange the calendar. His office was combined with many 
great secular posts, and thus was at last held by the most 
illustrious of the sons of Rome. It was by virtue of his pon- 
tificate that Julius Caesar in his pontifical residence enabled 
Clodius to penetrate into the convent of the Vestals close by. 
It is to the pontificate, not to the sovereignty of Julius Caesar, 
that we owe the Julian calendar. ■(• From him it descended to 
the Emperors, his successors, and from them to the Popes. 
The two are brought together in the most startling form on 
the pedestal of the obelisk on the Monte Citorio. On one side 
is the original dedication of it by Augustus Caesar, " Pontifex 
Maximus," to the Sun; on the other, by Pius VI., "Pontifex 
Maximus," to Christ. "When Bishop Dup'anloup, in a pamphlet 
on " L'Atheisme et le Peril Social," described the desertion of 
the Holy Father by the late Emperor of France, it was more 
appropriate than he thought when he said, " The Grand Pon- 
tiff covers his face with his mantle, and says k Et tu JllV " It 
was a Grand Pontiff who so covered his face, and who so ex- 
claimed : but that Pontiff was Julius Caesar, to whose office 
the Pope has directly succeeded. 

This is more than a mere resemblance of words. It brings 
before us the fact that the groundwork of the Pope's power 
is secular- — secular, no doubt, in its grand sense, resting on the 



* It is perhaps doubtful how far the word was confined to the Bishops of 
Rome. But the evidence is in favor of its having been appropriated to them 
in the first instance. 

+ For its Pagan origin, see Rossi, ii. 306. But is it (as he says) only from the 
Renaissance? Tertullian applied it ironically in the third century, and it 
would appear that it was used as a date from the fourth century, instead of 
the Consulship. (See Mabillon, and Theiner, Codex Diplomaticus.) 



THE POPE. 191 

prestige of ages, but still a power of this world, and supported 
always by weapons of this world. 

He held, and holds, his rank amongst the bishops of Chris- 
tendom, as the Bishop of the Imperial City, as the magistrate 
of that Imperial City when the Emperors left it. So, and for 
the same reason, Constantinople was the second see ; so, and 
for the same reason, Csesarea, as the seat of the Roman gov- 
ernment, not Jerusalem, was the seat of the Metropolitan of 
Palestine. 

The secular origin of the primacy of Rome belongs, in fact, 
to the secular origin of much beside in the early customs of 
the Church, illustrating and illustrated by them. The first 
church was a " basilica," not a temple, but a Roman court of 
justice, accommodated to the purposes of Christian worship.* 
The word " bishop," episcopus, was taken, not from any usage 
of the Temple or of the Synagogue, but from the officers 
created in the different subject-towns of Athens ; " borrowed," 
as Hooker says, "from the Grecians." The secular origin 
of the "holy orders" and " ordination " f have been already 
indicated. The word and idea of a " diocese " was taken from 
the existing divisions of the empire. The orientation of 
churches is from the rites of Etruscan augury. The whole 
ecclesiastical ceremonialism is, according to some etymologists, 
the bequest of Ccere, the sacred city of the Etruscans. The 
first figures of winged angels are Etruscan. The officiating 
bishop at ordinations in St. John Lateran washes his hands 
with medulla panis according to the usage of ancient Roman 
banquets. Of all these Christian usages of secular and Pagan 
origin, the Pope is the most remarkable example — a constant 
witness to the earthly origin of his own greatness, but also, 
which is of more general importance, to the indistinguishable 
union of things ecclesiastical and things civil, and here, as in 
the case of the more purely ecclesiastical customs, the investi- 
gation of his position shows on the one hand the historical 
interest, on the other the religious insignificance, of much 
which now excites such vehement enthusiasm, both of love 
and of hatred. 

* See Chapter IX. 

t As late as the sixth century Gregory the Great uses " ordo " for the civil 
magistrate, and "clerus " for the clergy. (Dictionary of Christian Antiqui . 
ties, u. 146-149.) 



192 CHRISTIAN INSTITUTIONS. 

III. Following up this aspect of the Pope's position, we 
arrive at his character as an Italian Bishop and an Italian 
As Italian Prince. Both go together. These belong to the 
prince. state of things at the beginning of the Middle 

Ages, out of which his power was formed. His more general 
and universal attributes arc derived from other considerations 
which must be treated apart. But his Italian nationality and 
his Italian principality are the natural result of a condition of 
society which has long since perished everywhere else. The 
Pope's " temporal power " belongs to that feudal and princely 
character which was shared by so many great prelates of the 
Middle Ages. Almost all the German Archbishops possessed 
this special kind of sovereignty, and in our own country the 
Bishops of Durham. The Archbishops of Cologne were 
Princes and Electors more than they were Archbishops. In 
the portraits of the last of the dynasty in the palace at Bruhl, 
near Bonn, for one which represents him as an ecclesiastic, 
there are ten which represent him as a prince or as a soldier. 
Of all those potentates, the Pope is almost the only one who 
remains. His principality is now regarded as an anomaly by 
some or as a miracle by others. But when it first existed, it 
was one of a large group of similar principalities. When, 
therefore, the Pope stood defended by his Chassepot rifles, or, 
in his reduced state, still surrounded by his Swiss guards, he 
must be regarded as the last of the brotherhood of the fight- 
ing, turbulent, courtly prelates of the Rhine, of the Prince 
Bishop of Durham, or the Ducal Bishop of Osnaburgh. His 
dynasty through its long course has partaken of the usual 
variations of character which appear in all the other Italian 
principalities. Its accessions of property have come in like 
manner ; sometimes by the sword, as of Julius II. ; sometimes 
by the donations of the great Countess Matilda; sometimes 
by the donations of Joanna, the questionable Queen of Naples. 
Like the other mediaeval prelates, the Popes had their hounds, 
and hunted even down till the time of Pius VI. Mariana, on 
the road to Ostia, was a famous hunting-seat of Leo X. 

If the Pope were essentially what he is sometimes believed 
to be, the universal Bishop of the universal Church, we should 
expect to find the accompaniments of his office corresponding 
tp this. But, in fact, it is far otherwise. In most of the con- 



TEE POPE. 193 

ditions of his office, the Italian Bishop and the Italian Prince 
are the first objects of consideration. That the first prelate 
of the West should have been, as we have seen, the Bishop of 
the old Imperial city, was natural enough. But it is some- 
what startling to find that the second prelate of the West is 
not one of the great hierarchy of France, or Germany, or 
Spain, or England, but the Bishop of the deserted Ostia — 
because Ostia is the second see in the Roman States. It is he 
— with the Bishops of Portus and Sabina — who crowns and 
anoints the Pope. It is he who is the Dean of the Sacred 
College. 

And this runs throughout. The electors to the office of the 
Pope, whether in early days or now, were not, and are not, 
the universal Church, but Romans or Italians.* In early days 
it was in the hands of the populace of the city of Rome. 
From the fourth to the eleventh century it was accompanied 
by the usual arts of bribery, fraud, and occasionally bloodshed. 
Afterwards it was shared with the 'civil authorities of the 
Roman municipality ; and so deeply was this, till lately, rooted 
in the institution, that, on the death of a Pope, the Senator 
resumed his functions as the supreme governor of the city.f 

Since the twelfth century the election has been vested in 
the College of Cardinals. But the College of Cardinals, 
though restrained by the veto of the three Catholic Powers, 
is still predominantly Italian ; and the result of the election 
has, since the fourth century, been almost entirely confined to 
Italian Popes. The one great -exception is an exception which 
proves the rule. During the seventy years when the Popes 
were at Avignon, they were there as completely French as 
before and since they have been Italians ; and for the same 
reason — because they were French princes living in a French 
city, as now and before they were Italian princes living in an 
Italian city. 

The feudal sovereignty over Naples was maintained by the 
giving of a white horse on St. Peter's day by the king of 
Naples — down till the time of Charles II. ; the protest against 

* See the account in Mr. Cartwright's interesting volume on Papal Con- 
claves, p. 36. 

t His long train at mass is carried (amongst others) by the Senator of Rome 
and the Prince "assisting." > N 



194 CHRISTIAN INSTITUTIONS. 

the annexation of Avignon by France has been abandoned 
since 1815. 

Whatever ingenuity, whatever intrigues, surround the elec- 
tion of a Pope are Italian, and of that atmosphere the whole 
pontifical dynasty breathes from the time it became a princi- 
pality till (with the exception of its exile in Provence) the 
present time. 

IV. Then follow the more general attributes of the Pope. 
As "the He is " the Pope." This title was not originally his 
Pope." owru It belonged to a time when all teachers were 

so called. It is like some of the other usages of which we have 
spoken, a relic of the innocent infantine simplicity of the 
primitive Church. Every teacher was then "Papa." The 
word was then what it is still in English, the endearing name 
of " father." In the Eastern Church, the custom continues 
still. Every parish priest, every pastor, is there a " Pope," a 
" Papa," and the ordinary mode of address in Russia is " my 
father" (" Batinska "). Gradually the name became restricted, 
either in use or significance. Just as the Bishops gradually 
rose out of the Presbyters, to form a separate rank, so the 
name of " Pope " was gradually applied specially to bishops. 
Cyprian, Bishop of Carthage, in the third century, was con- 
stantly entitled " Most glorious and blessed Pope ;" and the 
French bishops, in like manner, were called " Lord Pope." 
There is a gate in the Cathedral of Le Puy, in Auvergne, still 
called the " Papal Gate," not because of the entrance of any 
Pope of Rome there, but because of an old inscription which 
records the death of one of the bishops of Le Puy under the 
name of " Pope." * 

And yet, further, if there was any one Bishop in those 
early times who was peculiarly invested with this title above 
the rest, and known emphatically as " the Pope," it was not 
the Bishop of Rome, but the Bishop of Alexandria. From 
the third century downwards he was " the Pope " emphati- 
cally beyond all others. Various reasons are assigned for this 
honor ; but, in fact, it naturally fell to him as the head of the 
most learned church in the world, to whom all the other 
churches looked for advice and instruction. 

* The name is first applied to the Bishop of Rome in the letter of a deacon 
to Pope Marcellus, a.d. 375, but it was not till 400 that they took it formally. 



TEE POPE. 195 

In the early centuries, if the Bishop of Rome had the title 
at all, it was merely like other bishops. It was in Latin 
properly only used with the addition " My Pope," * or the 
like, and this is the earliest known instance of its application 
to the Roman Pontiff. It was not till the seventh century 
that it became his peculiar designation, or rather, that dropping 
off from all the other western bishops, it remained fixed in 
him, and was formally appropriated to its exclusive use in the 
eleventh. What "Papa" was in Greek and Latin, "Abba" 
was in Syriac, and thus accordingly was preserved in " Abbot " 
" Abbe," as applied to the heads of monastic communities, and 
to the French clergy, almost as generally as the word " Papa " 
has been in the Eastern Church for the parochial clergy. 

It is curious that a word which more than any other recalls 
the original equality not only of Patriarch with Bishop, of 
Bishop with Bishop, but of Bishop with Presbyter, should 
have gradually become the designation of the one preeminent 
distinction which is the keystone of the largest amount of 
inequality that prevails in the Christian hierarchy. 

It is also to be observed that a word used to designate the 
head of the Latin Church should have been derived from the 
Greek and Eastern forms of Christianity. 

What is it which constitutes the essence of this power of 
the Pope ? 

We have already seen that his dignity at Rome is inherited 
from the Roman Emperors — his territory from his position as 
an Italian Prelate. But his power as the Pope is supposed to 
give him the religious sovereignty of the world. 

It is often supposed that he possesses this as successor of 
St. Peter in the see of Rome. This, however, is an assump- 
tion which, under any theory that may be held concerning 
his office, is obviously untenable. That St. Peter died at 
Rome is probable. But it is certain that he was not the 
founder of the Church of Rome. The absence of an allusion 
to such a connection in St. Paul's Epistles is decisive. It is 



* "Papa suus," " Papa meus," " Papa noster," is the only form in which it 
occurs in the third and fourth centuries, as a term not of office, but of affec- 
tion, and meaning not a bishop but a teacher. (Mabillon, Vetera Analecta, 
141.) So the head of the Abyssinian clergy is called Abouroa, i.e., "our 
Father." 



196 CHRISTIAN INSTITUTIONS. 

also certain that he was not Bishop of the Church of Rome or 
of any Church. The office of " Bishop " in the sense of a 
single officer presiding over the community (with perhaps the 
exception of Jerusalem) did not exist in any Church till the 
close of the first century. The word, as we have seen, was 
originally identical with the word " Presbyter." The alleged 
succession of the early Roman Bishops is involved in contra- 
dictions which can only be explained on the supposition that 
there was then no fixed Episcopate. There is not only no 
shadow of an indication in the New Testament that the 
characteristics of Peter were to belong to official successors, 
but for the first three centuries there is no indication, or at 
least no certain indication, that such a belief existed any- 
where. It is an imagination with no more foundation in fact 
than the supposition that the characteristics of St. John 
descended to the Bishops of Ephesus. 

But, further, it is also a curious fact that by the theory of 
the Roman Church itself, it is not as Bishop of Rome that the 
Pope is supposed to acquire the religious sovereignty of the 
world. 

It is important to observe by what channel this is con- 
veyed. He becomes Bishop of Rome, as all others become 
Bishops, by regular consecration. He becomes Sovereign, 
as all others become Sovereigns, by a regular inauguration. 
But he becomes Pope, with whatever peculiar privileges that 
involves, by the election of the Cardinals ; and for this purpose 
he need not be a clergyman at all. Those who^6 suppose that 
he inherits the great powers of his office by the inheritance of 
an Episcopal succession mistake the case. Tf other Bishops, as 
some believe, derive their powers from the Apostles by virtue 
of an Apostolical succession, not so the Pope. He may, at the 
time of his election, be a layman, and, if duly elected, he may, 
as a layman, exercise, not indeed the functions of a Bishop, 
but the most significant functions which belong to a Pope. 
The Episcopal consecration, indeed, must succeed as rapidly as 
is convenient. But the Pope after his mere election is com- 
pletely in the possession of the headship of the Roman Catho- 
lic Church, even though it should so happen that the Episcopal 
consecration never followed at all. 

In point of fact, the early Popes were never chosen from the 



THE POPE. 197 

Bishops, and usually not from the Presbyters, but from the 
Deacons ; and the first who was chosen from the Episcopate 
was Formosus, Bishop of Portus, in 891. Hildebrand * was 
not ordained priest till after his election. He cannot even 
exercise the right of a Bishop, unless by dispensation from 
himself, until he has taken " possession " of the sovereignty in 
the Lateran. Three Popes have occupied the chair of St. 
Peter as laymen : John XIX., or XX. ,f in 1024; Adrian V.,J 
in 1276; Martin V., in 1417. § Of these, the first reigned for 
some years, and was ordained or consecrated with the accus- 
tomed solemnities. The third was enthroned as a layman, and 
passed through the grades of deacon, priest, and bishop on 
successive days. The second reigned only for twenty-nine 
days, and died without taking holy orders. Yet in that time 
he had acquired all the plenitude of his supreme authority, 
and had promulgated decrees modifying the whole system of 
Papal elections which by his successors were held to be 
invested with all the sacredness of Pontifical utterances. || 
Since the time of Urban VI., in 1378, the rule has been to 
restrict the office of Pope to the College of Cardinals. But 
this has no higher sanction than custom. As late as 1758, 
votes were given to one who was not a member of the Sacred 
College ; and the election of a layman even at this day, would 
be strictly canonical. If the lay element can thus without 
impropriety intrude itself into the very throne and centre of 
ecclesiastical authority, and that by the election of a body 
which is itself not necessarily clerical (for a cardinal is not of 
necessity in holy orders), and which till at least the last elec- 
tion was subject to lay influences of the most powerful kind 
(for each of the three chief Catholic sovereigns had a veto on 
the appointment), it is clear that the language commonly held 
within the Roman Catholic and even Protestant Churches, both 
Episcopal and Presbyterian, against lay interference in spiritual 
matters, meets with a decisive check in an unexpected quarter. 



* Bona, i. 189. t Planck, iii. 370. 

X Adrian V. and Martin V. were "Cardinal Deacons." But this is an office 
which is held by laymen. 

§ Fleury, xxi. 472. 

I See the facts in Cartwright's Conclaves, pp. 164, 195. " Eo ipso sit Ponti- 
fex summus totius Ecclesiae, etsi forte id non exprimant electores." (Bellar- 
mine, De Bom. Pont. ii. 23.) 



198 CHRISTIAN INSTITUTIONS. 

If the Pope himself may be a layman, and, as a layman, issue 
Pontifical decrees of the highest authority, he is a witness 
against all who are disposed to confine the so-called spiritual 
powers of the Church to the clerical or Episcopal order. 

Here, in this crucial case, the necessity of choosing " the 
right man for the right place" overrides all other considera- 
tions ; and if it should so happen that the College of Cardinals 
became convinced that the interests of the world and of the 
Church were best served by their choosing a philosopher or a 
philanthropist, a lawyer or a warrior, to the Pontifical chair, 
there is nothing in the constitution of the Roman see to for- 
bid it. The electors of the chief Pontiff may be laymen, — the 
sovereign of the Christian world may be a layman. Whether 
we regard this as a relic of the ancient days of the Church, in 
which the laity were supreme over the clergy, or as the ideal 
towards which the Church may be gradually tending, it is 
equally a proof that there is not, in the nature of things or in 
the laws of Christendom, any such intrinsic distinction be- 
tween the clergy and laity as to give to either an exclusive 
share in matters spiritual or temporal. 

Such being the mode by which the Pope, as such, is chosen, 
we next proceed to observe what are the functions which, as 
Pope, he is supposed to exercise. 

The word " Pope " has in common parlance passed with us 
into a synonym for " oracle." When we say that such a man 
As an ora- is " a Pope in his own circle," or that " every man 
cle - is a Pope to himself," we mean that he is a person 

whose word must be taken at once on any subject on which he 
may choose to speak. There was, as it happens, such an 
oracle once believed to reside in the Vatican Hill — where now 
stands the Papal palace — the oracle of the god Faunus; of 
whom the ancient Latins came to inquire in any difficulty, and 
received their reply in dr^am, oi by strange voices. Such an 
oracle the Pope is, by a certain number of his followers, sup- 
posed to be. But this has only within the last few years 
become the doctrine of the Roman Catholic Church, and many 
of those who maintain it confine the oracular power within very 
narrow limits, which may be always narrowed further still. 
His utterances are to be depended upon only when they relate 
to matters of faith and morals, and then only when he speaks 



THE POPE. 199 

officially; and as it will have always to be determined when 
it is that he speaks officially, and what matters are to be con- 
sidered of faith, it is evident that his oracular power may 
be limited or expanded, exactly according to the will of the 
recipients.* In point of fact the amount of light which the 
Papal See has communicated to the world is not large, com- 
pared with what has been derived from other episcopal sees, 
or other royal thrones. There have been occupants of the 
Sees of Constantinople, Alexandria, and Canterbury, who 
have produced more effect on the mind of Christendom by 
their utterances than any of the Popes. f Even in the most 
solemn Papal declarations, such as annexing South America to 
Spain, or determining the canonization of particular saints, or 
even in issuing such a decree as that concerning the Immaculate 
Conception, the Popes have acted rather as the mouthpieces 
of others, or judges of a tribunal, than on their own individ- 
ual responsibility. Canonizations, at least in theory, are the 
result of a regular trial. The Pope is not supposed to ven- 
ture to declare any one a canonized saint until he has been 
entreated, " urgently, more urgently, most urgently " (instan- 
ter, instantius, instantissime), by those who have heard 
the Devil's as well as the saint's advocate. The declaration 
of the recent dogmas of 1854 and 1870 professed to be the 
summing up of a long previous agitation, and the Pope did 
not issue it till he had asked the opinions of all the Bishops. 
It is the object of these remarks to state facts, not to discuss 
doctrines. But the fact is well worth observing, — first, be- 
cause it shows how wide and deep is the division in the 
Roman Catholic Church on the very question which, more 
than any other, distinguishes it from other Churches ; and, 
secondly, because it shows how small an amount of certainty 
or security is added to any one's belief by resting it on the 
oracular power of the Pope. On most of the great questions 
which agitate men's minds at present, on Biblical criticism, 

* A curious trace of the individual character of the Pope being maintained 
rather than his official character, is that he signs his Bulls not by his official 
but his personal name, in the barbarous form, Placet Joannes.— Wiseman's 
Four Popes. 223. . 

t See Dr. Newman's Apologia, p. 407. " The see of Rome possessed no great 
mind in the whole period of persecution. Afterwards for a long while it had 
not a single doctor to show. The great luminary of the western world is St. 
Augustine: he, no infallible teacher, has formed the intellect of Europe." 



200 CHRISTIAN INSTITUTIONS. 

on the authorship of the Sacred Books, on the duration of 
future punishment, he has not pronounced any opinion at all ; 
and on others, such as the relations of Church and State, of 
the condition of the working classes, of slavery, and the like, 
the opinions he has expressed are either so ambiguous, or so 
contradictory, that they are interpreted in exactly opposite 
senses by the prelates in Italy and the prelates in Ireland. 
Even if it were conceded that such an oracle exists at Rome, 
there still is no certainty either as to its jurisdiction or its 
meaning. Most of those who have studied its utterances, 
however they may respect its venerable antiquity and honor 
its occasional wisdom, will carry away as their chief impres- 
sion its variations and its failures. 

But turning from this much-disputed attribute of the Pope, 
there is no question in his own communion, there is not much 
question out of it, that he is or till very lately was one of the 
chief rulers of Christendom. This, rather than his oracular 
power, is the characteristic of his office brought out by Greg- 
ory VII and Innocent III. And this, like so much which we 
have noticed, is a relic of a state of things that has passed 
av/ay. It is part of the general framework of mediaeval 
Christendom. There were only two potentates of the first 
magnitude at that time — the Pope and the Emperor. The 
kings were in theory as much subject to one as to the other. 
The Pope and the Emperor, though with inextricable con- 
fusion in their mutual relations, were cast as it were in the 
same mould. Dante could no more have imagined the Em- 
peror ceasing than the Pope. Indeed, he would have sooner 
spared the Pope than the Emperor. He sees no Pope (ex- 
cept St. Peter) in paradise — no Emperor in hell. When the 
Emperor fell in the fall of the Suabian dynasty, the Pope, 
instead of gaining by the destruction of his ancient enemy, 
was weakened also. They were twin brothers. They were 
Siamese twins. The death of the one involves the ultimate 
death of the other, at least in the aspect in which they are 
correlative. No king, except the German princes, is now de- 
pendent on the Emperor of Germany. No king is now de- 
pendent on the Pope of Rome. The monarchy of Christen- 
dom has ceased, for all practical purposes, as certainly as the 
monarchy of ancient Rome ceased after the expulsion of the 



THE POPE. • 201 

Tarquins. But when the kings were driven out from ancient 
Rome, there was still a king kept up in name to perform the 
grand ceremonial offices which no one but a person having 
the name of " king " or " Rex " could discharge. The " Rex 
sacrificulus " * took 'precedence of all the other functionaries, 
religious or secular, in the old Roman constitution, down to 
the time of Theodosius. He lived on the Via Sacra, near the 
palace of the Pontifex Maximus. He was the ghost of the 
deceased Roman kingdom, just as the Pope is the ghost of 
the deceased Roman Empire. Such as he was in regard to 
the external constitution of the Roman kingdom, such the 
Pope is in regard to the external constitution of Western 
Christendom. He takes precedence still of all the monarchs 
of Catholic Europe. He always dines alone, lest a question 
of precedence should ever arise. The Papal Nuncio is still 
the head of the diplomatic body in every Catholic country. 
Even the Protestant sovereigns, on receiving a congratulatory 
address from that body in France or Spain, must receive it 
from the lips of the Nuncio. The Pope's rank is thus an 
interesting and venerable monument of an extinct world. His 
outward magnificence compared with his inward weakness is 
one of the most frequently noted marks of his position in the 
world. 

It is in this capacity that he was seen by Bunyan, in the 
cave where lay the giants Pope and Pagan — decrepit, aged, 
mumbling. It has been said that Peter has no gray hairs. 
This is not the verdict of history. His hairs are very gray ; 
he is not what he once was. He exhibits the vicissitudes of 
history to an extent almost beyond that of any other sovereign. 

V. This leads us to yet one more attribute of the Pope. Even 
those who entirely repudiate his authority must still regard him 
as the chief ecclesiastic of Christendom. If there „, 
is such a thing as a body of clergy at all, the Bishop the chief 
of Rome is certainly the head of the profession. In ecclesiastlc - 
him we see the pretensions, the merits, the demerits of the cler- 
ical office in the most complete, perhaps in the most exagger- 
ated, form. His oracular power is only, to a certain extent, 

* He lived on the hill called " Velia." Next to him came the Flamen, who 
lived in the Flaminian meadows; next the Pontifex Maximus, who lived by the 
Temple of Vesta. 

9* 



202 CHRISTIAN INSTITUTIONS. 

claimed by the rest of the clergy. It may not be, perhaps, 
avowed by any other clergyman, Roman Catholic or Protest- 
ant, often as they may think it or imply it, that they are 
infallible, or that they can add, by their own mere motion, 
new articles of faith. But wherever such claims exist, the 
office of the Pope is an excellent field in which to discuss the 
matter. The same reasons which convince us that the Pope is 
not infallible may convince us of the same defect in regard to 
the less dignified ecclesiastics. The advantages which the 
clerical order have conferred on Christendom, and the dis- 
advantages, are also well seen in the history of the Popes, on # 
a large scale. 

Again, the Pope well exemplifies the true nature of the much 
confused terms, "spiritual and temporal power." His spiritual 
power — that is, his moral and intellectual power over the minds 
and consciences of men — is very small. Even amongst Roman 
Catholics, there are very few who really believe anything the 
more because the Pope says so ; and the Popes who have been 
authors of eminence are very few and far between. Probably 
few sees, as we have said, in Christendom have really contrib- 
uted so little through their personal occupants to the light of 
the world. No Pope has ever exercised the same real amount 
of spiritual influence as Augustine, or Aquinas, or Thomas a 
Kempis, or Luther, or Erasmus, or Shakespeare, or Loyola, or 
Hegel, or Ewald. 

But his secular power over ecclesiastics is very considerable. 
He in many instances controls their temporal positions. His 
tribunals, whatever may be their uncertainty and caprice, com- 
pared to an English court of justice, are still, to the ecclesiasti- 
cal world of Roman Catholic Christendom, what the Supreme 
Court of Appeal is to the Church of England. 

It is against the exercise of this power that Henry II. in 
England, and St. Louis* in France, and Santa Rosa in Piedmont, 
contended. It is, as a protection against it, that the state in 
France, Austria, Spain, Italy, Portugal, and virtually in Prussia, 
has retained the nomination of the bishops of those countries in 
its own hands, and fenced itself about with concordats and 
treaties, against the intrusion of so formidable a rival. By this 

* See Lanfrey's Histoire Politique dies Papes, p. 878. 



THE POPE. 203 

protection the Abbot of Monte Casino, under the present king- 
dom of Italy, enjoys a freedom which he with difficulty main- 
tained against the Pope, and the Archbishop of Paris, almost 
until he fell a victim to the fanaticism of the Parisian populace, 
was upheld by the Emperor of the French. 

VI. It has been the purpose of these remarks to confine them 
as closely as possible to facts acknowledged by all. 

One remaining fact, however, also is certain, that there is no 
personage in the world whose office provokes such widely dif- 
ferent sentiments as that of the Pope. It was said His mixed 
that Pius IX. had two sides to his face — one malig- character, 
nant, the other benevolent. Once, and once only, the malig- 
nant side appeared in a photograph, which was immediately 
suppressed by the police. Whether this is true or not, it is no 
unapt likeness of the opposite physiognomy which the Papal 
office presents to the two sides of the Christian world. To the 
one he appears as the Vicar of Christ, to the other as Anti- 
christ; to the one as the chief minister and representative of 
the Holy and the Just, to the other as his chief enemy. Nor 
is this diversity of aspect divided exactly according to the 
division of the ancient and modern churches. There have been 
members of the Roman Church, like Petrarch, who have seen 
in the Papal city a likeness of Babylon, as clearly as Luther or 
Knox. There have been Protestants, like Arnold and Guizot, 
who have recognized in certain phases of the Papacy a benefi- 
cence of action and a loftiness of design, as clearly as Bossuet 
and De Maistre. Nay, even to the same mind, at the same 
time, the office has alternately presented both aspects, as it did 
to Dante. And again, the Pope, who, to most Protestants, ap- 
pears as the representative of all that is retrograde, dogmatic, 
and superstitious, appears in the eyes of the Eastern Church as 
the first Rationalist, the first Reformer, the first founder of pri- 
vate judgment and endless schism. 

This diversity of sentiment is certainly not the least instruc- 
tive of the characteristics of the Papal office. Many causes 
may have contributed towards it, but the main and simple 
cause is this, — that the Papal office, like many human institu- 
tions, is a mixture of much good and much evil ; stained with 
many crimes, adorned with many virtues ; with many peculiar 
temptations, with many precious opportunities; to be judged 



204 Christian institutions. 

calmly, dispassionately, charitably, thoughtfully, by all who 
come across it. So judged, its past history will become more 
intelligible and more edifying ; so judging, we may, perhaps, 
arrive hereafter at some forecast of what may be its Future in 
the present and coming movements of the world. 

It once chanced that an English traveller, in a long evening 
spent on the heights of Monte Casino, was conversing with one 
of the charming inmates of the ancient home of St. Benedict, 
who was himself, like most of his order in Italy, opposed to 
the temporal power of the Pope. The Protestant Englishman 
ventured to ask the liberal-minded Catholic : " How do you 
forecast the possibility of the accomplishment of your wishes 
in the face of the steadfast opposition of the reigning pontiff 
and the long traditional policy of tho Roman Court?" He re- 
plied, " I console myself by looking back at the history of the 
Papacy. I remember that St. Peter came to Rome a humble 
fisherman, without power, without learning, with no weapon 
but simple faith, and his life in his hand. I remember next 
that when the barbarians came in, and the European monarch- 
ies were founded, there came a man as unlike to St. Peter as 
can possibly be conceived — of boundless ambition, of iron will 
— Hildebrand, who alone was able to cope with the difficulties 
of his situation. Then came the Renaissance, classic arts, pa- 
gan literature; and there arose in the midst of them Leo X., 
as their natural patron, as unlike to Hildebrand as Hildebrand 
to St. Peter. Then came the shock of the Reformation — the 
panic, the alarm, the reaction — the Muses were banished, the 
classic luxury was abolished, and the very reverse of Leo X. 
appeared in the austere Puritan, Pius V. And now we have 
Pius IX. . . . And in twenty or a hundred years we may 
have a new Pope, as unlike to Pius IX. as Pius IX. is unlike to 
Pius V., as Pius V. was unlike to Leo X., as Leo X. was unlike 
to Hildebrand, as all were unlike to St. Peter; and on this I 
rest my hope of the ultimate conciliation of Rome and Italy, 
of Catholicism and freedom." 

Such, or nearly such, was the consolation administered to 
himself by the genial historian of Monte Casino ; and such, 
taken with a wider range, is the consolation which we may 
minister to ourselves in viewing the changes of an institution 
which, with all its failings, cannot but command a large share 



THE POPE. 205 

of religious and philanthropic interest It is always within the 
bounds of hope, that a single individual, fully equal to the 
emergency, who should by chance or Providence find himself 
in that (or any like) exalted seat, might work wonders — won- 
ders which, humanly speaking, could not be worked, even by 
a man of equal powers, in a situation less commanding. There 
is a mediaeval tale which has even some foundation in fact,* 
that a certain Pope was once accused before a General Council 
on the charge of heresy. He was condemned to be burned ; 
but it was found that the sentence could not be legally carried 
into execution but with the consent of the Pope himself. The 
assembled Fathers went to the Pope — venerunt ad Papam — 
and presented their humble petition — et dixerunt, Papa, 
judica te cremari; and the Pope was moved to pity for the 
inextricable dilemma in which the Fathers were placed. He 
consented to their prayer. He pronounced judgment on him- 
self — et dixit, Judico, me cremari; and his sentence was car- 
ried into effect — et crematus est — and then in reverential grati- 
tude fdr so heroic an act of self-denial he was canonized — et 
postea veneratus pro sancto. Such, although with a more 
cheerful issue, might be the solution of the entanglement of 
the Church by some future Pope. We have but to imagine a 
man of ordinary courage, common sense, honesty, and discern- 
ment — a man who should have the grace to perceive that the 
highest honor which he could confer on the highest seat in the 
Christian hierarchy, and the highest service he could render to 
the Christian religion, would be from that lofty eminence to 
speak out to the whole world the truth, the whole truth, and 
nothing but the truth. Such an one, regarding only the facts 
of history, but in the plenitude of authority which he would 
have inherited, and " speaking ex cathedra, in discharge of his 
office of pastor and doctor of all Christians," might solemnly 
pronounce that he, his predecessors, and his successors, were 
fallible, personally and officially, and might err, as they have 
erred again and again, both in faith and morals. By so doing- 
he would not have contradicted the decree of infallibility, more 



* The story is founded on the deposition of Gregory V. In the real story the 
Council was not a General, but a Provincial Council; the Pope's crime was 
not heresy, but simony: the sentence pronounced was not death, but deposi- 
tion. 



206 CHRISTIAN INSTITUTIONS. 

than that decree contradicts the decrees of previous councils 
and the declarations of previous Popes. By so doing he would 
incur insult, obloquy, perhaps death. But like the legendary 
Pope of whom we have spoken, he would have deserved the 
crown of sanctity, for he would have shown that quality which 
above all others belongs to saints in the true sense of the word. 
He would have risen above the temptations of his situation, his 
order, his office ; he would have relieved the Catholic Church 
from that which its truest friends feel to be an intolerable in- 
cubus, and restored it to light and freedom. 



NOTE. 

THE POPE'S POSTURE IN THE COMMUNION. 

It is one of the most curious circumstances of the curious prac- 
tice of the Pope's sitting at the Communion, that amongst Roman 
Catholics themselves there should be not only the most conflicting 
evidence as to the fact, but even entire ignorance as to thejpractice 
ever having existed. In the leading Roman Catholic journal * the 
statement that such a practice prevailed was asserted to be "the 
purest romance;" and though this expression was afterwards cour- 
teously withdrawn, yet the fact was still denied, and it appeared 
that there were even well-instructed Roman Catholics who had 
never heard of its existence. This obscurity on the matter may 
perhaps show that it is regarded as of more importance than would 
at first sight appear. 

1. The Roman Liturgies themselves have no express statement 
on the subject. They all agree in directing that the Pope retires 
to his lofty seat — "ad sedem eminentem" — behind the altar, and 
there remains. Some of them add that he "stands" waiting foi 
the sub-deacon to approach with the sacred element ; but beyond 
this, with the exceptions hereafter to be noticed, there is no ordei 
given. 

2. The earliest indication of the Pope's position to which a refer- 
ence is found is in St. Bonaventura (1221-1274), on Psalm xxi. : 
" Papa quando sumit corpus Christi in misss! solemni, sumit omni- 
bus videntibus, nam, sedens in cathedra, se convertit ad populum " 
(Opp. vol. i. pp. Ill, 112); and that this was understood to mean that 
he communicated sitting appears from the marginal note of the 
edition of Bonaventura published by order of Sixtus V. (1230-1296), 
"Papa quare communicet sedens.'" 

Durandus, in his " Rationale" (iv. §§ 4, 5, p. 203), and the "Liber 

* Dublin Review, 1869. 



THE POPE. 207 

Sacrarum Caerimoniarum " (p. 102), use nearly the same words: 
"Ascendens ad sedem eminentem ibi communicat." This expres- 
sion, though it would suggest that the Pope was seated, does not of 
necessity imply it. But the "Liber Sacrarum Caerimoniarum," 
although at Christmas (p. 133) it describes the Pope immediately 
after his ascension of the chair as "ibi stans," when it speaks of 
Easter (p. 176) expressly mentions the posture of sitting as at least 
permissible. " Communione facta, Papa surgit, si communicando 



Cardinal Bona (" Rev. Lit." ii. c. 17, 88; iii. p. 395) — than whom 
there is no higher authority — writes: " Summus Pontifex cum sol 
emniter celebrat sedens communit hoc modo." * 

Martene (1654-1789), " De Ant. Eccl. Rit." i. 4, 10, p. 421, states 
that " Romas summus Pontifex celebrans in sua" sede consistens seip- 
sum communicabat. Postea accedebant episcopi et presbyteri ut a 
pontifice communionem accipiant, episcopi quidem stantes ad se- 
dem pontificis, presbyteri vero ad altare genibus flexis." 

The obvious meaning of this passage is that the Pope remains 
("consistens") f in his place, sitting; whilst the other clergy, accord- 
ing to their ranks, assume the different postures described, the 
bishops standing, the presbyters kneeling. And this is the view 
taken of it by Moroni, the chamberlain and intimate friend of the 
late Pope Gregory XVI., who cites these words as showing "che 
in Roma il Papa communicamsi sedendo nel suo trono " (Dizionario, 
vol. xv. p. 126). 

It is hardly necessary to confirm these high Roman authorities by 
the testimony of Protestant Ritualists. But that it was the received 
opinion amongst such writers that the Pope sits appears from 
the unhesitating assertions to this effect by Bingham, Neale, 
and Maskell. 

3. To these great liturgical authorities on the theory of the Papal 
posture may be added, besides Moroni (whose words just cited may 
be taken as a testimony to the practice of Gregory XVI.), the fol- 
lowing witnesses to the usage of modern times. 

The Rev. J. E. Eustace, the well-known Roman Catholic traveller 
through Italy, says: "When the Pope is seated, the two deacons 
bring the holy sacrament, which he first reveres humbly on his 
knees, and then receives in a sitting posture." Eustace mentions 
the practice with some repugnance, and adds: "Benedict XIII. 
could never be prevailed upon to conform to it, but always re- 
mained standing at the altar, according to the usual practice." 
(Eustace's "Travels," ii. 170.) 

Archbishop Gerbet, who has the credit of having instigated the 
recent "Syllabus," and whose work on "Rome Chretiennc" is 



* A question has been raised as to the authority on which the Cardinal puts 
forth his statement. But this does not touch the authority of the Cardinal 
himself. 

t The word itself means simply " keeping his place." 



208 CHRISTIAN- INSTITUTIONS. 

expressly intended as a guide to the antiquities of Christian Rome, 
writes as follows : 

' ' Le Pape descend de l'autel, traverse le sanctuaire et monte au 
siege pontifical. La, a demi assis, quoique incline par respect, il 
communie," etc. " L 'attitude du Pape et cette communion multi- 
ple . . . retracent la premiere communion des Apotres assis a" 
la table du Sauveur." ("Rome Chretienne," ii. 86, 87.) 

The passage is the more interesting as Gerbet's reference to the 
original attitude shows his belief that it was the retention of the 
primitive practice. 

4. This mass of testimony might be thought sufficient to establish 
so simple a fact. But it will be observed that there is a slight 
wavering in the statement of Martene and of G-erbet; and this vari- 
ation is confirmed by the silence or by the express contradiction of 
other authorities, not indeed so high, but still of considerable 
weight. 

It is stated that in the "Ordo" of Urban VIII., after the adora- 
tion of the sacred elements the Pope immediately rises, " statim 
surgit;" and that Crispus, who was sub-deacon to Clement XI., 
says, "in cathedra stans et veluti erectus in cruce sanguinem sugit." 
These same authorities, with Catalaui, also state that after the com- 
munion "the Pope takes his mitre and sits down," "sumpta" mitra" 
sedet," or "accipit mitram et sedens," etc. It is also said to be 
mentioned as a peculiarity that on Easter Day, 1481, Sixtus IY. 
was obliged by infirmity to sit down during the communion at 
High Mass, which, if so be, would imply that it was not the usual 
posture. 

£)r. Bagge (in his book on the Pontifical Mass, 1840) states that 
"the Pope does not receive sitting, as Eustace and others assert. 
When the sub-deacon has reached the throne the Pope adores the 
Sacred Host, the cardinal-deacon then takes the chalice and shows 
it to the Pope and the people. . . . It is carried from the dea- 
con to the Pope, who, having adored, remains standing." * 

5. Between these contradictory statements there is a middle view, 
which probably contains the solution of the enigma, and is to be 
found in the statements of two authorities, which for this reason 
are reserved for the conclusion. 

The first is Rocca (1545-1620), who "was chosen corrector of the 
press of the Sixtine Bible, and is said to have excelled all others in 
ecclesiastical knowledge; and who, on account of his perfect ac- 
quaintance with rubrics and Liturgies, was appointed Apostolic 
Commentator by Pope Clement VIII. " \ 

He writes as follows (in his " Thesaurus Rituum," in the " Com- 



* These quotations, which I have not been able to verify, are taken from 
the statements of the writer in the Dublin Review, April, 1869. pp. 514, 515. 

t Dublin Review, April, 1869, p. 516. The same passage extracts from the 
sentence quoted in the text, " Summus Pontifex ad solium stans, non sedens," 
but omits all that precedes and all that follows. 



TEE POPE. 209 

mentarium de Sacra S. Pontificis communione," 20): Dicitur autem 
Summus Pontifex sedere dum communicat, vel quia ipse antiquitus 
in communicando sedebat, vel quia sedentis instar communicabat, 
sicut prcesens in tempus fieri solet. Summus namque Pontifex ad 
solium, stans non sedens, ad majorem venerationem reprsesent- 
andam, ipsi tamen solio, populo universo spectante, innixus, et in- 
curvus, quasi sedens communicat, Christum Dominum cruci affixum, 
in eaque quodam modo reclinantem reprsesentans. " 

The other is Pope Benedict XIV. (1740-1758), who thus writes in 
his treatise "De Sacrosancto Missae Sacrificio," lib. ii. c. 21, § 7: 
' ' Ulud autem praetermitti non potest, Romanos quosdam Pontifices 
in solemni Missa in solio sedentes, facie ad populum conversa, Eucha- 
ristiam sumere consuevisse, ut Christi Passio et Mors experimeretur, 
qui pro palam passus et mortuus est in conspectu omnium, quotquot 
nef arise Crucifixioni adfuere tamen (?) vero Summum Pontificem, 
cum solemnem celebrat Missam, se aliosque communicare facie 
quidem ad populum conversa, sed pedibus stantem in solio, corpore 
tamen inclinato, cum et ipse suscipit, aliisque praebet Eucharis- 
tiam. . . . Hinc est quamobrem Pontifex populo, procul et 
exadverso in faciem eum adspicienti, videatur sedens communicare, 
ut bene observabat post S. Bonaventuram Rocca de solemni commu- 
nione Summi Pontificis et Casalius de veteribus Sacris Christian- 
orum Ritibus, cap. 81, p. 333, ed. Rom. 1647." 
^ From these two statements it appears that the Popes in ancient 
times sat whilst communicating, but that from the close of the six- 
teenth, century they usually stood in a leaning or half -sitting posture. 

To these must be added a further statement of Pope Benedict 
XIV., in a letter addressed in 1757 to the Master of the Pontifical 
Ceremonies, on the general question of the lawfulness, under cer- 
tain circumstances, of celebrating Mass in a sitting posture. 

The general cases which raise the question are of gout and the 
like; but in the course of the discussion the Pope describes some 
particulars respecting his predecessors bearing on the present subject. 

Pius III. was elected to the Pontificate (in 1503) when he was still 
only a deacon. He was ordained priest on the 1st of October, and 
on the 8th of October he himself celebrated Mass as Pope. On both 
of these occasions (being troubled by an ulcer in the leg) toe sat dur- 
ing the whole ceremony ; a seat was solemnly prepared, in which 
he was to sit, and the altar arranged in the form of a long table, 
under which he might stretch his legs ("sedem in qu& sedens ex- 
tensis cruribus ordinaretur, et mensam longam pro altari ut pedes 
subtus extendi possent"). It also appears that in the Papal chapel 
it is considered generally that the Pope has liberty to sit whilst he 
administers the elements to his court. It appears, further, that (also 
without any reference to special cases) the Pope sits during the 
ceremony of his ordination as sub-deacon, deacon, and presbyter, if 
he has been elected to the Pontificate before such ordination ; and 
that the fact of this posture during the Holy Communion was con- 
sidered by Benedict XIV, to cover the question generally. It will 



210 CHRISTIAN INSTITUTIONS. 

be sufficient to quote the passage which relates to the ordination of 
a Pope as priest. ' ' In collatione sacerdotii sedens Pontifex manuum 
impositionem, olei sancti, quod catechumenorum dicitur, unctionem, 
calicem cum vino et aqua, et patinam cum hostia, recipit. Quae 
omnia luculenter ostendunt haud inconveniens esse seder e Pontificem in 
functionibus sacratissimis, utque eo ipso Missam Mam a sedente posse 
celebrari, prcesertim si pedibus debilitatis insistere non valeat" He 
concludes with this pertinent address on his own behalf to the Mas- 
ter of the Ceremonies : " Et, siquidem sedentes missam celebrare 
statuimus, tuum erit praeparare mensam altaris cum consecrato 
lapide," etc., "vacuumque subtus altare spatium relinquaturexten- 
dendis pedibus idoneum; confidentes singula dexteritati tuse singu- 
lari perficienda, apostolicam tibi benedictionem peramanter imper- 
timur."* 

6. The conclusion, therefore, of the whole matter must be this. 
In early times, probably down to the reign of Sixtus Y. (as in- 
dicated in the mrrginal note on St. Bonaventura), the position of the 
Pope was sitting, as a venerable relic of primitive ages. Gradually, 
as appears from the words of Eustace, the value of this tenacious 
and interesting adherence to the ancient usage was depreciated from 
its apparent variation from the general sentiment, as expressed in 
the standing posture of priests and the kneeling attitude of the com- 
municants, and it would seem that before the end of the sixteenth 
century the custom had been in part abandoned. But with that 
remarkable tenacity of ecclesiastical usages, which retains particles 
of such usages when the larger part has disappeared, the ancient 
posture was not wholly given up. As the wafer and the chalice are 
but minute fragments of the ancient Supper — as the standing post- 
ure of the priests is a remnant of the standing posture of devotion 
through the whole Christian Church-— as the standing posture of the 
English clergyman during part of the Communion Service is a rem- 
nant of the standing posture of the Catholic clergy through the 
whole of it — as the sitting posture of the earlier Popes was a rem- 
nant of the sitting or recumbent posture of the primitive Christian 
days — so the partial attitude of the present Popes is a remnant of the 
sitting posture of their predecessors. It is a compromise between 
the ancient historical usage and modern decorum. The Pope's atti- 

* Opp. xvii. 474, 489. It will be observed that the acceptance of the chalice 
and paten by the Pope at his ordinations is not of itself the Communion. It 
must be further noticed that the Pope in thus writing makes this qualification: 
" Dum Romanus Pontifex solemniter celebrat, . . . recipit sacram Eucha- 
ristiam sub speciebus panis et vini stans, neque sedens communicat, prout 
per errorem scripserunt aliqui, viderique potest torn. ii. Tract Nostri de Sac. 
Missce, sect. i. c. 20, § 1." It is a curious example of what may be called " the 
audacity" which sometimes characterizes expressions of Pontifical opinion, 
that the very passage to which Benedict XIV. in the last year of his life, thus 
referred to as "an erroneous statement" of the Pope's *' sitting at the Com- 
munion," contains his own assertion that "some of the Roman Pontiffs in 
solemn mass were accustomed to receive the Eucharist sitting." In fact, it 
is difficult to reconcile the statement in the letter just quoted with the pas- 
sages which are quoted in the text. 



THE POPE. 211 

tude, so wo gather from Rocca and Benedict XIV,, and also from 
Archbishop Gerbet, is neither of standing or of sitting. He goes to 
his lofty chair, he stands till the sub-deacon comes, he bows himself 
down in adoration as the Host approaches. Thus far all are agreed, 
though it is evident that at a distance any one of those postures 
might be taken, as it has by some spectators, for the posture at the 
act of communion. But in the act of communion, as far as we can 
gather from the chief authorities, he is in his chair, facing the 
people, leaning against the back of the chair, so as not to abandon 
entirely the attitude of sitting — sufficiently erect to give the appear- 
ance of standing, with his head and body bent down to express the 
reverence due to the sacred elements. This complex attitude would 
account for the contradictions of eye-witnesses, and the difficulty of 
making so peculiar a compromise would perhaps cause a variation 
m the posture of particular Popes, or even of the same Pope on par- 
ticular occasions. What to one spectator would seem standing, to 
another would seem sitting, and to another might seem kneeling. 

This endeavor to combine a prescribed attitude either with con- 
venience or with a change of sentiment is not uncommon. One 
parallel instance has been often adduced in the case of the Popes 
themselves. In the great procession on Corpus Christi Day, when 
the Pope is carried in a palanquin round the Piazza of St. Peter, it 
is generally believed that, whilst he appears to be in a kneeling atti- 
tude, the cushions and furniture of the palanquin are so arranged 
as to enable him to bear the fatigue of the ceremony by sitting, 
whilst to the spectators he appears to be kneeling.* Another par- 
allel is to be found from another point of view, in one of the few 
other instances in which the posture of sitting has been retained, or 
rather adopted, namely, in the Presbyterian Church of Scotland. 
There the attitude of sitting was rigidly prescribed. But, if we may 
trust an account of the Scottish Sacrament, believed to be as accu- 
rate as it is poetic, the posture of the devout Presbyterian peasant as 
nearly as possible corresponds to that which Eocca, Gerbet, and 
Benedict XIV. give of the Pope's present attitude — "innixus," 
"incurvus inclinato corpore," "a demi assis," " une prof onde in- 
clination de corps:" 

" There they sit .... 
.... In reverence meet 
Many an eye to heaven is lifted, 

Meek and very lowly. 
Souls bowed down with reverent fear) 
Hoary-headed elders moving, 
Bear the hallowed bread and wine, 
While devoutly still the people 
Low in prayer bow the head." t 

It is interesting to observe this ancient usage becoming small by 

* See the minute account of an eye-witness in 1880 in Crabbe Robinson's 
Diary, ii. 469. 
t Kilmahoe; and other Poems. By J. C. Shairp. 



212 OHBISTIAN INSTITUTIONS. 

degrees and*beautifully less, yet still not entirely extinguished: re* 
duced from recumbency to sitting, from the sitting of all to the 
sitting of a single person, from the sitting of a single person to the 
doubtful reminiscence of his sitting, by a posture half -sitting, half- 
standing. 

The compromise of the Pope's actual posture is a characteristic 
specimen of that ' * singular dexterity" which Benedict XIV. attributes 
to his Master of the Ceremonies, and which has so often marked the 
proceedings of the Roman court. To have devised a posture by 
which, as on the festival of Corpus Christi, the Pope can at once sit 
and kneel; or — as in the cases mentioned by Pope Benedict XIV. — 
an arrangement by which the Pope, whilst sitting, can "stretch his 
legs in the vacant space under the altar " ; or, as in the case we have 
been considering, a position of standing so as to give the appearance 
of sitting, and sitting so as to give the appearance of standing — is a 
minute example of the subtle genius of the institution of the Papacy. 
As the practice itself is a straw, indicating the movement of prim- 
itive antiquity, so the modern compromise is a straw, indicating the 
movement of the Roman Church in later times. 



THE LITANY. 213 



CHAPTER XII. 

THE LITANY. 

The Litany is one of the most popular parts of the English 
Prayer Book. It is not one of the most ancient parts, but it 
is sufficiently ancient to demand an inquiry into its peculiari- 
ties, and its peculiarities are sufficiently marked to demand a 
statement. 

I. First, as to its origin. It is one of the parts of the 
Prayer Book which has its origin in a time neither primi- 
tive nor reformed. For four hundred years there were no 
prayers of this special kind in the Christian Church; nor, 
again, in the Reformed Church were any prayers like it 
introduced afresh. It sprang from an age gloomy with disas- 
ter and superstition, when heathenism was still struggling with 
Christianity ; when Christianity was disfigured by fierce con- 
flicts within the Church ; when the Roman Empire was totter- 
ing to its ruin; when the last great luminary of the Church — 
Augustine — had just passed away, amidst the forebodings of 
universal destruction. It was occasioned also by a combina- 
tion of circumstances of the most peculiar character. The 
general disorder of the time was aggravated by an unusual 
train of calamities. Besides the ruin of society, attendant on 
the invasion of the barbarians, there came a succession of 
droughts, pestilences, and earthquakes, which seemed to keep 
pace with the throes of the moral world. Of all these horrors, 
France was the centre. On one of these occasions, when the 
people had been hoping that, with the Easter festival, some 
respite would come, a sudden earthquake shook the Church at 
Vienne, on the Rhone. It was on Easter eve ; the congrega- 
tion rushed out; the bishop of the city (Mamertus) was left 
alone before the altar. On that terrible night he formed a 
resolution of inventing a new form, as he hoped, of drawing 
down the mercy of God. He determined that in the three 



214 CHRISTIAN INSTITUTIONS. 

days before Ascension day there should be a long procession 
to the nearest churches in the neighborhood. From Vienne 
the custom spread. Amongst the vine-clad mountains, the 
extinct volcanoes of Auvergne, the practice was taken up with 
renewed fervor. From town to town it ran through France ; 
it seemed to be a new vent for a hitherto pent-up devotion — a 
new spell for chasing away the evils of mankind. Such was 
the first Litany — a popular supplication, sung or shouted, not 
within the walls of any consecrated building, but by wild, 
excited multitudes, following each other in long files, through 
street and field, over hill and valley, as if to bid nature join in 
the depth of their contrition. It was, in short, what we 
should call a revival.* 

It is only by an effort that we can trace the identity of a 
modern Litany with those strange and moving scenes. Our 
attention may, however, be well called to the contrast, for vari- 
ous reasons. 

1. We do well to remember that a good custom does not 
lose its goodness because it arose in a bad time, in a corrupt 

. . age, in a barbarous country. Out of such dark 
Its origin. e '. . , J £ _ . 

beginnings nave sprung some or our best institu- 
tions. In order for a practice or a doctrine to bear good 
Christian fruit, we need not demand that its first origin should 
be primitive, or Protestant, or civilized ; it i» enough that it 
should be good in itself and productive of good effects. 

2. Again, it is well to remember that the goodness of a 
thing depends not on its outward form, but on its inward 
spirit. The very word " Litany," in its first origin, included 
long processions, marches to and fro, cries and screams, which 
have now disappeared almost everywhere from public devo- 
tions, even in the Roman Catholic Church. Those who estab- 
lished it would not have imagined that a Litany without these 
accompaniments could have any efficacy whatever. We know 



* Sidonius Apollinaris, i. 7; Gregory of Tours (Hist. Franc, ii. 6. 34), a.d. 447. 
There were some earlier and some later developments of this practice, but 
this seems the most authentic statement of their first beginning. The brief 
form of "Kyrie Eleeson " had existed before. The first occurs in the heathen 
worship. "When we call upon God, we say of him Kupie eAerjo-ov." (Arrian, 
Comment, de Epist. Disput. ii. c. 7.) The Litany for St. Mark's Day was in- 
stituted a.d. 590 by Gregory the Great, partly to avert a pestilence, partly as 
a substitute for a procession which was held by the ancient Romans to pro- 
pitiate the goddess Robigo, or Mildew. 



THE LITANY. 215 

now that the accompaniments were mere accidents, and that 
the substance has continued. What has happened in the 
Litany has occurred again and again with every part of our 
ecclesiastical system. Always the form and the letter are 
perishing ; always there will be some who think that the form 
and the letter are the thing itself ; generally in the Christian 
Church there is enough vitality to keep the spirit, though the 
form is changed ; generally, we trust, as in the Litany, so else- 
where, there will be found men wise enough and bold enough 
to retain the good and throw off the bad in all the various 
forms of our religious and ecclesiastical life. 

3. Again, there is a peculiar charm and interest in knowing 
the accidental historical origin of this service. To any one 
who has a heart to feel and an imagination to carry him back- 
wards and forwards along the fields of time, there is a pleasure, 
an edification in the reflection that the prayers which we use 
were not composed in the dreamy solitude of the closet or the 
convent, but were wrung out of the necessities of human suf- 
ferers like ourselves. If, here and there, we catch a note of 
some expression not wholly suitable to our own age, there is 
yet something at once grand and comforting in the recollec- 
tion that we hear in those responses the echoes of the thunders 
and earthquakes of central France, of the irruption of wild 
barbarian hordes, of the ruin of the falling empire ; that the 
Litany which we use for our homelier sorrows was, as Hooker 
says, " the very strength and comfort of the Church " in that 
awful distress of nations. " The offences of our forefathers," 
the " vengeance on our sins," the " lightning and tempest," the 
" plague, pestilence, and famine," the " battle and murder, and 
sudden death," the "prisoners and captives," the "desolate 
and oppressed," the " troubles and adversities," the " hurt of 
persecutions," — all these phrases receive a double force if they 
recall to us the terrors of that dark, disastrous time, when the 
old world was hastening to its end, and the new was hardly 
struggling into existence. 

4. Further, it was under a like pressure of calamities that 
the Litany first became part of our services. It is the earliest 
portion of the English Prayer Book that appeared in its pres- 
ent English form. It was translated from Latin into English 
either by Archbishop Cranmer or by King Henry VIII. 



216 CHRISTIAN INSTITUTIONS. 

himself. These are the words with which, on the eve of his 
expedition to France in 1544, he sent this first instalment of 
the Prayer Book to Cranmer : " Calling to our remembrance 
the miserable state of all Christendom, being at this present 
time plagued, besides all other troubles, with most cruel wars, 
hatreds, and disunions, .... the help and remedy hereof 
being far exceeding the power of any man, must be called for 
of Him who only is able to grant our petitions, and never for- 
saketh or repelleth any that firmly believe and faithfully call 
upon Him ; unto whom also the examples of Scripture encour- 
age us in all these and others our troubles and perplexities to 
flee. Being therefore resolved to have continually from hence- 
forth general processions in all cities, towns, and churches or 
p arishes of this our realm, .... forasmuch as heretofore the 
people, partly for lack of good instruction, partly that they 
understood no part of such prayers and suffrages as were used 
to be said and sung, have used to come very slackly, we have 
set forth certain goodly prayers and suffrages in our native 
English tongue, which we send you herewith." * 

Thus it is that whilst the Litany at its first beginning ex- 
pressed the distress of the first great convulsion of Europe in 
the fall of the Roman Empire, the Litany in its present form 
expressed the cry of distress in that second great convulsion 
which accompanied the Reformation. It is the first utterance 
of the English nation in its own native English tongue, calling 
for divine help, in that extremity of perplexity, when men's 
hearts were divided between hope and despair for the fear of 
those things that were coming on the earth. 

5. In like manner many a time have those expressions of awe 
and fear struck some chord in the hearts of individuals, far 
more deeply than had they been more calmly and deliberately 
composed at first. 

How affecting is that account of Samuel Johnson, whom, 
in the church of St. Clement Danes, his biographer overheard 
repeating in a voice that trembled with emotion the petition 
which touched the only sensitive chord in his strong mind, 
" In the hour of death and in the day of judgment, good Lord 
deliver us !" How striking was the use made by a great orator 

* Froude's History of England, iv. 483. 



TEE LITANY. 217 

of the words of another clause, when, on the occasion of the 

omission of the name of an unfortunate princess from the 

Liturgy, he said that there was at least one passage in the 

Litany where all might think of her and pray for her — amongst 

those who were "desolate and oppressed." 

II. Secondly, it is instructive to notice how, in succeeding 

ages, the particular grievance or want of the time, _. 

& ' . r „ 5- mi t- i u j x Its contents, 

sometimes well, sometimes ill, has labored to express 

itself amongst these petitions. 

1. It was natural that, in the reign of Edward VI., when the 
burdensome yoke of the see of Rome had only just been shaken 
off, a prayer should have been added, — " From the tyranny 
of the Bishop of Rome, and from all his detestable enormities, 
good Lord deliver us." This was perhaps excusable under 
the circumstances ; but it is a matter of rejoicing that, by the 
wisdom of Elizabeth, this fierce expression should have been 
struck out. 

2. Again, amidst the general unsettlement of civil and re- 
ligious society in the time of Henry VIII. , and of Charles II., 
it was no wonder that the petitions should have been crowded 
with alarms, in the first instance, of " sedition, privy conspiracy, 
false doctrine, and heresy," or " hardness of heart and contempt 
of God's commandments;" in the second instance of "rebellion 
and schism." 

These expressions dwell too exclusively on the dangers of 
disorder and anarchy, and too little on the dangers of de- 
spotism and arbitrary power. Yet there is one petition, 
which first came in with the dawn of the Reformation, 
which no ancient Litany seems to have contained, and yet 
which attacks the chief sin that called down the displeasure of 
Christ — the prayer against hypocrisy. It is not unimportant 
to remember that in the prayer against that sin, in its full 
extent — the sin of acting a part — the sin of disregarding 
truth — the sin of regarding the outward more than the inward 
— in that one prayer is summed up the whole spirit of the 
Reformation. 

3. Again, the present Litany stands alone in the prominence 
which it gives, and the emphasis which it imparts, to the 
prayer for the sovereign. It was no doubt intended to be the 
expression of the great principle vindicated in Hooker's 

10 



218 CHRISTIAN INSTITUTIONS. 

" Ecclesiastical Polity," that tlie sovereign, as representative of 
the law, controls and guides the whole concerns both of Church 
and State. It was the expression of the wish to secure for the 
interest of the State no less than for the interest of the clergy, 
not merely as in the old Litanies, victory abroad, and peace at 
home, but righteousness and holiness of life, the faith, the fear, 
and the love of God. 

4. Again, as we read some of the petitions we cannot but 
call to mind the wishes of good men that something might 
have been added or explained. The prayer against sudden 
death. — Earnestly did the Puritan divines in the time of 
Charles II. entreat that this might be expanded into what was 
probably intended, and what in fact existed in the older forms 
— " From dying suddenly and unprepared." It was a natural 
scruple. Many a one has felt that " sudden death " would be 
a blessing and not a curse — and that to those who are prepared 
no death can be sudden. The hard, uncompromising rulers of 
that age refused to listen to the remonstrance ; and we, as we 
utter the prayer in its unaltered form, may justly feel a mo- 
mentary pang at the thought of the good men on whose con- 
sciences they thus needlessly trampled. 

Again, let any reflect on the changes meditated by the good 
men who made the last attempt of revision in 1689 : " From 
all rash censure and contention ;" and again, " from drunkenness 
and gluttony" "from sloth and misspending of our time" " from 
lying and slandering, from vain swearing, cursing, and perjury, 
from covetousness, oppression, and all injustice, good Lord 
deliver us ;" " Let it please Thee to endue us with the graces 
of humility and meekness, of contentedness and patience, of true 
justice, of temperance and purity, of peaceableness and charity," 
"and have pity upon all that are persecuted for truth and 
righteousness' sake" In these intended additions of Tillotson, 
Burnet, and Patrick, we see at once the keen sense of the evils, 
some of them peculiar to that age — of the higher virtues, also 
peculiar to that age no less. 

Again, in our own times it has been recorded of Archbishop 
Whately, that when he came to the prayer that we might not 
" be hurt by persecutions," he always added internally a prayer 
" that we may not be persecutors." This was a holy and a 
noble thought, much needed, well supplied, which perhaps be- 



THE LITANY. 219 

fore our age it would hardly have occurred to any ecclesiastic 
to utter. 

In this way the Litany has grown with the growth of 
Christendom ; and may, without any direct change, suggest 
even more than it says to those who use it rightly. 

III. We turn from the occasion and the growth of the 
Litany to the form in which it is expressed. That form is 
very peculiar, and its explanation is to be sought 
in the occasion of its first introduction. The usual 
mode of addressing our prayers, both in the Scriptures and in 
the Prayer Book, is to God, our Father, through Jesus Christ. 
This is the form of the Lord's Prayer, after which manner we 
are all taught to pray. This is the form throughout the New 
Testament, with two exceptions, which shall be noticed pres- 
ently. This was the general mode of prayer throughout the 
early ages of the Church. Even those earlier forms of prayer 
which are most like the Litany are for the first three hundred 
years of the Church always addressed direct to God the Father.* 
It was the normal condition of the only part of the Liturgy 
that is of ancient use — that of the Eucharist. In conformity 
with this, is the plan adopted in almost all the collects and 
prayers in the other parts of the English Prayer Book. Most 
important is this, both because only by so doing do we fulfil 
the express commands of Christ and also because it thus keeps 
before our minds the truth, which the Scriptures never allow 
as to let go, of the Unity of Almighty God. Most fully, too, 
have the greatest ecclesiastical authorities on this subject re- 
cognized both the doctrine and the fact, that, as a general rule, 
prayer ought to be addressed, and has in the usual form of 
ancient catholic devotion been always addressed, only to God 
the Father. 

But there are exceptions. No rule, even in these sacred 
matters, is so rigid as not to admit some variations. The 
largest number of such variations are in the poetical parts of 
the service, and are probably connected with the peculiar feel- 
ing which led to the use of poetic diction in public worship. 
But the most remarkable exception is the Litany. It is not 
perhaps certain that all the petitions are addressed to Christ ;f 

* See Keble's Eucharistical Adoration, p. 114. 

t "We beseech The© to hear us, O Lord," is in the older Litanies addressed 



220 CHRISTIAN INSTITUTIONS. 

but at any rate, a large portion are so addressed. It stands in 
this respect almost isolated amidst the rest of the Prayer 
Book. What is the reason — what is the defence for this? 
Many excellent persons have at times felt a scruple at such a 
deviation from the precepts of Scripture and from the practice 
of ancient Christendom. What are we to say to explain it % 
The explanation may be found in the original circumstances 
under which the Litany was introduced. When the soul is 
overwhelmed with difficulties and distresses, like those which 
caused the French Christians in the fifth century to utter their 
piteous supplications to God, it seems to be placed in a differ- 
ent posture from that of common life. The invisible world is 
brought much nearer — the language, the feelings, of the heart 
become more impassioned, more vehement, more urgent. The 
inhabitants, so to speak, of the world of spirits seem to be- 
come present to our spirits ; the words of common intercourse 
seem unequal to convey the thoughts which are laboring to 
express themselves. As in poetry, so in sorrow, and for a simi- 
lar reason, our ordinary forms of speech are changed. So it 
was in the two exceptions which occur in the New Testament. 
When Stephen was in the midst of his enemies, and no help 
for him left on earth, then " the heavens were opened, and he 
saw the Son of Man standing on the right hand of God," and, 
thus seeing Him, he addressed his petition straight to Him — 
" Lord Jesus, receive my spirit — Lord, lay not this sin to their 
charge." When St. Paul was deeply oppressed by the thorn 
in the fleshy then again his Lord appeared to him (we know 
not how), and then to Him, present to the eye whether of the 
body or the spirit (as on the road to Damascus), the Apostle 
addressed the threefold supplication, " Let this depart from 
me," and the answer, in like manner, to the ear of the body 
or spirit, was direct — " My grace is sufficient for thee." So is 
it in the Litany. Those who wrote it, and we who use it, 
stand for the moment in the place of Stephen and Paul. We 
knock, as it were, more earnestly at the gates of heaven — we 
" thrice beseech the Lord " — and the veil is for a moment 
withdrawn, and the Son of Man is there standing to receive 

to God (Martene, iii. 52), and so it would seem to be in some of the petitions in 
the English Litany. But perhaps the most natural interpretation is to regard 
the whole as addressed to Christ. 



THE LITANY. 221 

our prayer. In that rude time, when the Litany was first 
introduced, they who used it would fain have drawn back the 
veil further still. It was in the Litanies of the Middle Ages 
that we first find the invocations not only of Christ our Sa- 
viour, but of those earthly saints who have departed with Him 
into that other world. These the Protestant Churches have 
now ceased to address. But the feeling which induced men 
to call upon them is the same in kind as that which runs 
through this whole exceptional service : namely, the endeavor, 
under the pressure of strong emotion and heavy calamity, to 
bring ourselves more nearly into the presence of the Invisible. 
Christ and the saints at such times seemed to come out like 
stars, which in the daylight cannot be seen, but in the dark- 
ness of the night are visible. The saints, like falling stars or 
passing meteors, have again receded into the darkness. Chris- 
tians by increased reflection have been brought to feel that of 
them and of their state not enough is known to justify this 
invocation of their help. But Christ, the Lord and King of 
the saints, still remains — the Bright and Morning Star, more 
visible than all the rest, more bright and more cheering, as the 
darkness of the night becomes deeper, as the cold becomes 
more and more chill. 

We justly acquiesce in the practice which has excluded 
those lesser mediators. But this one remarkable exception of 
the Litany in favor of addressing our prayers to the one Great 
Mediator may be permitted, if we remember that it is an 
exception, and if we understand the grounds on which it is 
made. In the rest of the Prayer Book we follow the ancient 
rule and our Master's own express command, by addressing the 
Father only. Here in the Litany, when we express our most 
urgent needs, it may be allowed to us to deviate from that gen- 
eral rule, and invite the aid of Jesus Christ, at once the Son 
of Man and Son of God. 

Such being the case, two important results are involved in 
this form of the Litany. 

1. If, on this solemn occasion, we can thus leave for a 
moment the prescribed order of devotion, and, with Stephen 
and Paul, address to Christ the prayers which we usually 
address to the Father, it implies a unity between the Father 
and the Son which is sometimes overlooked. Often we read 



222 CHRISTIAN INSTITUTIONS. 

statements which seem to speak of the Father and the Son as 
if they were two rival divinities, the one all justice, the other 
all love ; the one bent on destroying guilty sinners, the other 
striving to appease the Father's wrath ; the one judging and 
forgiving, the other suffering and pleading. Such is the im- 
pression we many of us receive from some expressions in Mil- 
ton's " Paradise Lost," and in Protestant and Roman Catholic 
divines, and from many well-known hymns. It is the reverse 
of this impression that we receive from the Litany. It is not 
the wrath of the Father, but the wrath of Christ, from which 
in the Litany we pray to be delivered. It is the goodness and 
forgiveness, not of the Father, but of Christ, that we entreat 
for our sins. The mind and purpose of God is made known 
to us through the mind and purpose of Christ. We feel this 
truth nowhere more keenly than in the trials and sorrows of 
life ; and we therefore express it nowhere more strongly than 
in the Litany. 

2. Again, the Litany sets before us in its true aspect the 
meaning of Redemption. "What is Redemption ? It is, in 
one word, deliverance. We are in bondage to evil habits, in 
bondage to fear, in bondage to ignorance, in bondage to su- 
perstition, in bondage to sin : what we need is freedom and 
liberty. That is what we ask for every time we repeat the 
Litany : "Good Lord, set us free." Libera nos, Domine. 

Deliverance — how, or by what means? By one part of 
Christ's appearance ? by one part of Christianity ? by a single 
doctrine or a single fact ? By all — by the whole. Not by 
His sufferings only — not by His death only — not by His 
teaching only; but "by the mystery of His holy incarna- 
tion — by His baptism — by His fasting — by His temptation — 
by His agony and bloody sweat — by His precious death and 
burial — by His glorious resurrection and ascension, and by 
the coming of the Holy Ghost." This wide meaning of the 
mode of Redemption was a truth sufficiently appreciated in 
the early ages of the Church; and then it was piece by piece 
divided and subdivided, till the whole effect was altered and 
spoiled. Let us go back once more in the Litany to the com- 
plex yet simple whole. Let us believe more nearly as we pray. 

The particular forms used may be open to objection. We 
might wish that some of the features had been omitted, or that 



TEE LITANY. 223 

other features had been added. But there remains the gene- 
ral truth — that it is by the whole life and appearance of Christ 
we hope to be delivered. 

Deliverance from what ? From what is it that we ask to be 
ransomed, redeemed, delivered? This also was well under- 
stood in the early Church, though sometimes expressed in 
strange language. It was, as they then put it, " deliverance from 
the power of the devil" — deliverance from that control, over 
the world which was in those days supposed to be possessed by 
the Evil Spirit. This belief, in form, has passed away. We 
do not now see demons lurking in every corner. But the 
substance of the belief remains. We pray in the Litany for 
deliverance from evil in all its forms ; from evil, moral and 
physical ; from the evil in our own hearts ; from the evil brought 
on the world by the misgovernment, and anarchy, and wild 
passions of mankind ; from the evils of sickness and war and 
tempest ; from the trials of tribulation and from the trials of 
wealth ; — from all these it is that we ask for deliverance. Each 
petition places before us some of the real evils in life which 
keep us in bondage. In proportion as we get rid of them we 
share in Christ's redemption. This is the object of the most 
earnest supplications of the Church ; because it is the object of 
Christianity itself ; because it is the purpose for which Christ 
came into the world ; because, if He delivers us not from these, 
He delivers us from nothing ; because, so far as He delivers us 
from these, He has accomplished the work which He was sent 
to do. Let us act and think more nearly as we pray. 



224 CHRISTIAN INSTITUTIONS. 



CHAPTER XIII. 

THE ROMAN CATACOMBS. 

The belief of the early Christians, that is, of the Christians 
from the close of the first century to the conversion of the 
Empire at the beginning of the fourth, is a question which is 
at once more difficult and more easy to answer than we might 
have thought beforehand. 

It is in one sense extremely difficult. 

The popular, the actual belief of a generation or society of 
men cannot always be ascertained from the contemporary 
writers, who belong for the most part to another stratum. The 
belief of the people of England at this moment is something 
separate from the books, the newspapers, the watchwords of 
parties. It is in the air. It is in their intimate conversation. 
We must hear, especially in the case of the simple and un- 
learned, what they talk of to each other. We must sit by their 
bedsides ; get at what gives them most consolation, what most 
occupies their last moments. This, whatever it be, is the belief 
of the people, right or wrong — this, and this only, is their real 
religion. A celebrated Roman Catholic divine of the present 
day has described, in a few short sentences, what he conceives 
to be the religious creed of the people of England : — that it 
consists of a general belief in Providence and in a future life. 
He is probably right. But it is something quite apart from 
any formal creeds or confessions or watchwords which exist. 
Is it possible to ascertain this concerning the early Christians ? 
The books of that period are few and far between, and these 
books are, for the most part, the works of learned scholars 
rather than of popular writers. Can we apart from such books 
discover what was their most ready and constant representation 
of their dearest hopes here and hereafter ? Strange to say, after 
all this lapse of time it is possible. The answer, at any rate, 
for that large mass of Christians from all parts of the empire 



THE BO MAN CATACOMBS. 225 

that was collected in the capital, is to be found in the Roman 
Catacombs. 

It is not necessary to enter upon the formation of the Cata- 
combs. For a general view it may be sufficient to refer to 
" On Pagan and Christian Sepulture," in the " Es- The Cata- 
says" of Dean Milman. For the details of the combs, 
question it is more than sufficient to refer to the great work of 
Commendatore De Rossi. It has been amply proved by the in- 
vestigations of the last two hundred, and especially of the last 
thirty years, that there were in the neighborhood of Rome, 
from the first beginning of the settlement of the Jews in the 
city, large galleries dug in the rock, which they used for their 
places of burial. The Christians, following the example of the 
Jews, did the same on a larger scale. In these galleries they 
wrote on the graves of their friends the thoughts that were 
most consoling to themselves, or painted on the walls the 
figures which gave them most pleasure. By a singular chance 
these memorials have been preserved to us by the very causes 
which have destroyed so much beside. The Catacombs were 
deserted at the time of the invasion of the barbarians, and filled 
up with ruins and rubbish ; and from the sixth to the seven- 
teenth century no one thought it worth while to explore them. 
The burial of Christian antiquity was as complete as that of 
Pagan antiquity, and the resurrection of both took place nearly 
at the same time. The desertion, the overthrow of these an- 
cient galleries, has been to the Christian life of that time what 
the overthrow of Pompeii by the ashes of Vesuvius was to the 
Pagan life of the period immediately antecedent. The Cata- 
combs are the Pompeii of early Christianity. It is much to the 
credit of the authorities of the Roman States that at the time 
when the excavations began they allowed these monuments to 
speak for themselves. Many questionable interpretations have 
been put upon them, but in no respect has there been substan- 
tiated any charge of wilful falsification. 

We confine ourselves to the simple statement of the testimony 
which they render to the belief of the second and third cen- 
turies. For this reason, we exclude from consideration almost, 
if not altogether, those subsequent to the age of Constantine. 
We merely state the facts as they occur ; and if the results be 
pleasing or displeasing to the members of this or that school 

10* 



§26 CHRISTIAN mSTITVTTOM 

of modern religious opinion, perhaps it will be a sufficient safe- 
guard that they will be almost equally pleasing or displeasing 
to the members of all such schools equally. 

I. First, what do we learn of the state of feeling indicated in 
the very structure of the Catacombs beyond what any books 
could teach us ? 

The Catacombs are the standing monuments of the Oriental 
and Jewish character even of Western Christianity. The fact 
Their Jewish that they are the counterparts of the rock-hewn 
character. tombs of Palestine, and yet more closely of the 
Jewish cemeteries in the neighborhood of Rome, corresponds 
to the fact that the early Roman Church was not a Latin but 
an Eastern community, speaking Greek, and following the 
usages of Syria. And again, the ease with which the Roman 
Christians had recourse to these cemeteries is an indication of 
the impartiality of the Roman law, which extended (as De Rossi 
The toiera- has well pointed out) to this despised sect the same 
eaSy Chris- P rotect ion in respect to burial, even during the times 
tians. of persecution, that was accorded to the highest 

in the land. They thus bear witness to the unconscious foster- 
ing care of the Imperial Government over the infant Church. 
They are thus monuments, not so much of the persecution as 
of the toleration, which the Christians received at the hands 
of the Roman Empire. 

These two circumstances, confirmed as they are from various 
quarters, are, as it were, the framework in which the ideas of 
the Church of the Catacombs are enshrined, and yet they are 
quite unknown to the common ecclesiastical histories. 

3. A similar profound ignorance shrouded the existence of 
the Catacombs themselves. There are no allusions to the Cat- 
acombs in Gibbon, or Mosheim, or Neander ; nor, in fact, in 
any ecclesiastical history, down to the close of the first quarter 
of this century. Dean Milman's " History of Christianity " 
was the earliest exception. Nor again is there any allusion in 
the Fathers to their most striking characteristics. St. Jerome's 
narrative of being taken into them as a child is simply a de- 
scription of the horror they inspired. Prudentius has a pass- 
ing allusion to the paintings, but nothing that gives a notion of 
their extent and importance. 

II. We now proceed to the beliefs themselves, as presented 



THE ROMAN CATACOMBS. 227 

in the pictures or inscriptions, confining ourselves as much as 
possible to those which are earliest and most univer- The pio- 
sal. But before entering on these, let us glance for tures - 
a moment at those which, though belonging to the latest 
years of this period — the close of the third century — yet still 
illustrate the general character even of the earlier. The sub- 
jects of these paintings are for the most part taken from the 
Bible, and are as follows : In the New Testament they are the 
Adoration of the Magi, the Feeding of the Disciples, Zacchaeus 
in the Sycamore, the Healing of the Paralytic, the Raising of 
Lazarus, the Washing of Pilate's Hands,* Peter's Denial, the 
Seizure of Peter by the Jews. In the Old Testament they are 
the Creation, the Sacrifice of Isaac, the Stag Desiring the 
Water Brooks, the Striking of the Rock, Jonah and the Whale, 
Jonah under the Gourd, Daniel in the Lions' Den, the Three 
Children in the Fire, Susanna and the Elders. 

On this selection we will make three general remarks. 
1. Whilst it does not coincide with the theology and the 
art of the modern Western Church, it coincides to a certain 
degree with the selection that we find in the Eastern Church. 
The Raising of Lazarus, for example, fell completely continuance 
out of the range of the Italian painters and out of in the East- 
the scholastic theology of the Middle Ages ; but it fn^he^West- 
may still be traced in the Byzantine traditions as ern Church, 
preserved in Russia. In one of the most ancient chapels of 
the Kremlin there is a representation of the mummy-like form 
of Lazarus issuing from his tomb, exactly similar to that which 
appears in the Roman Catacombs. The Three Children, who 
cease to occupy any important place in the Latin Church, are 
repeatedly brought forward in the Eastern Church. Three 
choristers stand in front of the altar at a particular part of the 
service to represent them, and the only attempt at a mystery or 
miracle play in the Middle Ages of Russia was the erection of 
a large wooden platform with the painted appearance of fire 
underneath, on which three actors stood forth and played by 
gesture and song the part of the Three Children. 



* Tertullian (On the Lord's Prayer, c. 13) censures strongly the practice of 
washing hands before prayer, and says that on inquiry he found it was in imi- 
tation of Pilate's act. 



228 Chbistian institutions. 

2. Secondly, the mere fact of paintings at all in these early 

Contradic- chapels is in direct contradiction to the general con- 

H on P f . , demnation of any painting of sacred subjects in the 
theological J r & . J 

writers. writers * or the first centuries. It is as if the popu- 
lar sentiment had not only run counter to the written theology, 
but had been actually ignorant of it. 

3. Thirdly, the selection of these subjects, whether in the 
Eastern or in the Western Church, is quite out of proportion 
Absence of to the choice of these same subjects in the books of 
books°of*the ^ e ^ me ^ na ^ nave come down to us. Few of them 
time. are conspicuously present in the writers of the three 
first, or indeed of the sixteen first centuries; and of one of 
them, at least, the arrest of Peter by the Jewish soldiers, it is 
not too much to say that there is no incident record in any 
extant books to which it can with certainty be applied at all. 

These points do not illustrate any contradiction to the ex- 
isting opinions either of Protestant or Catholic Churches in 
modern times. The subject to which these paintings relate 
for the most part do not involve, even by remote implication, 
any of these disputed opinions. But they indicate a difference 
deeper than any mere expression of particular doctrines. They 
show that the current of early Christian thought ran in an alto- 
gether different channel, both from the contemporary writers 
of the early period, and also both from the paintings and the 
writings of the later period. In the collection of the works of 
the Fathers of the second and third centuries, it is difficult to 
find allusion to any one of these topics. Of the paintings of 
the tenth and eleventh centuries recently discovered in the 
subterranean church of St. Clement at Rome, not one of all 
the numerous series is identical with those in the Catacombs. 

III. But this peculiarity of the Catacombs thus visible to a 
certain extent, even in the third century, appears still more 
forcibly when we confine ourselves to the earliest chambers, 
and to the most important figures which they contain. 

There is one such chamber especially, which, according to 
the Commendatore De Rossi, is the earliest that can be found, 
reaching back to the beginning of the second century. It is 

* See the summary of opinions of the Fathers on art in the English transla- 
tion of Tertullian in the Library of the Fathers. (Notes to the Apology, vol. 
li, p. 110.) 



THE BOMAtf CATACOMBS. 229 

that commonly known as the Catacomb of Sts. Nereus and 
Achilleus, otherwise of St. Domitilla. 

In this chamber there are three general characteristics : 

1. Everything is cheerful and joyous. This, to a certain 
degree, pervades all the Catacombs. Although some of them 
must have been made in times of persecution, yet cheerfui- 
even in these the nearest approach to such images ness - 

of distress and suffering is in the figures before noticed — (and 
these are not found in the earliest stage) — the Three Children 
in the Fire, Daniel in the Lions' Den, and Jonah naked under 
the Gourd. But of the mournful emblems which belong to 
nearly all the later ages of Christianity, almost all are wanting 
in almost all the Catacombs. There is neither the cross of the 
fifth or sixth century, nor the crucifix or the crucifixion of the 
twelfth or thirteenth, nor the tortures and martyrdoms of the 
seventeenth, nor the skeletons of the fifteenth, nor the cypresses 
and death's heads of the eighteenth. There are, instead, 
wreaths of roses, winged genii, children playing. This is the 
general ornamentation. It is a variation not noticed in ordi- 
nary ecclesiastical history. But it is there. There are two 
words used in the very earliest account of the very earliest 
Christian community to which the English language furnishes 
no exact equivalent ; one is their exulting bounding gladness 
(ayaWiaffit) ; the other their simplicity and smoothness of 
feeling, as of a plain without stones, of a field without furrows 
(a(ps\orr/$). These two words from the records of the first 
century * represent to us what appears in the second century 
in the Roman Catacombs. It may be doubted whether they 
have ever been equally represented at any subsequent age. 

2. Connected with this fact is another. It is astonishing 
how many of these decorations are taken from heathen sources 
and copied from heathen paintings. There is Heathen 
Orpheus playing on his harp to the beasts ; there is subjects. 
Bacchus as the God of the vintage ; there is Psyche, the butter- 
fly of the soul ; there is the Jordan as the God of the river. 
The Classical and the Christian, the Hebrew and the Hellenic, 
elements had not yet parted. The strict demarcation which 
the books of the period would imply between the Christian 

* Acts ii. 46. 



230 CHBISTIAN INSTITUTIONS. 

Church and the heathen world had not yet been formed, or 
was constantly effaced. The Catacombs have more affini- 
ty with the chapel of Alexander Severus, which contained 
Orpheus side by side with Abraham and Christ, than they 
have with the writings of Tertullian, who spoke of heathen 
poets only to exult in their future torments, or of Augustine, 
who regarded this very figure of Orpheus only as a mischievous 
teacher to be disparaged, not as a type of the union of the 
two forms of heathen and Christian civilization. It agrees 
with the fact that the funeral inscriptions are often addressed 
Dis Manibus, " to the funeral spirits." 

3. We see in the earliest chambers not only the beginning, 
but in a certain sense the end of early Christian art. By the 
Early Chris- time we reach the fourth century the figures are 
tianart. misshapen, rude, and stiff, partaking of that deca- 
dence which marks the Arch of Constantine, and which is devel- 
oped into the forms afterwards called Byzantine. But in the 
second and third centuries, in the Catacombs of St. Domitilla, 
of St. Prsetextatus, and St. Priscilla, there is in the sweetness 
of the countenance, the depths of the eyes, the grace and 
majesty of the forms, an inspiration of a higher source, it may 
be partly from the contact with the still living art of Greece, 
it may be from the contact with a purer and higher flame of 
devotion not yet burnt out in fierce controversy. 

There is a figure which occurs constantly in the Catacombs, 
and which in those earliest of all has a peculiar grace of its 
own — that of the dead person represented in the peculiar 
position of prayer, which has now entirely ceased in all Chris- 
tian churches, but as it may still now and then be seen in Moham- 
medan countries — the attitude of standing with the hands 
stretched out to receive the gifts which Heaven would pour 
into them. Such are the figures of the " Oranti," as they are 
technically called, in the Catacombs, men or women, according 
to the sex of the departed. Such also were the holy hands 
and upturned eyes of the worshippers in the heathen temples 
of Greece or Rome. The most perfect representation of this in 
Christian art is, perhaps, that of the departed Christian in the 
Catacomb of St. Priscilla. The most perfect representation of 
this in heathen art is, perhaps, that of the bronze figure of an 
adoring youth, found in the Rhine, of this same period of the 



THE ROMAN CATACOMBS. 23i 

Roman Empire, and now in the Museum at Berlin. An animated 
description which has been given of this statue in a recent 
work devoted to Greek art, might, with a few changes of ex- 
pression, be applied to the painting of the departed Christian 
in the Catacomb of St. Priscilla. " His eyes and arms are 
raised to heaven ; perfect in humanity beneath the lightsome 
vault of heaven, he stands and prays — no adoration with veiled 
eyes and muttering lips — no prostration, with the putting off 
of sandals on holy ground — no genuflexion, like the bending 
of a reed waving with the wind, — but such as Iamus in the mid 
waves of Alpheus might have prayed when he heard the voice 
of Phoebus calling to him, and promising to him the twofold 
gift of prophecy." 

Such is the ideal of the worshipping youth of a Pagan 
temple of that period — such is the transfigured idea of the 
worshipping maiden or matron in the Christian Catacomb. 
Such has not been the ideal of worship in any later age of the 
Church. 

IV. But the question might here be asked, if these sacred 
decorations are so like what we find in heathen tombs or 
houses, how do we know that we are in a Christian burial- 
place at all ? What is the sign that we are here in the 
chamber of a Christian family ? What is the test, what is 
the watchword, by which these early Christians were known 
from those who were not Christians ? 

We have already indicated some of the Biblical subjects ; 
we also know well what we should find in the various later 
churches, whether Greek, Latin, Anglican, Lutheran, or Non- 
conformist. Some distinctive emblems we should find every- 
where, either in books, pictures, or statues. But none of these 
were in the Catacombs even of the third century : and in the 
Catacombs of the second century, not even those which are 
found in the third and fourth centuries. 

1. What, then, is the test or sign of Christian popular 
belief that in these earliest representations of Christianity is 
handed down to us as the most cherished, the all- The Good 
sufficing token of their creed? It is very simple, Shepherd. 
but it contains a great deal. It is a shepherd in the bloom of 
youth, with a crook or a shepherd's pipe in one hand and on 
his shoulder a lamb, which he carefully carries and holds with 



232 CHRISTIAN INSTITUTIONS. 

the other hand. We see at once who it is ; we all know with- 
out being told. There are two passages in two of the sacred 
books, which, whatever may be the critical discussion about 
their dates, must be inferred from these paintings to have 
been by that time firmly rooted in the popular belief of the 
community. One is that from the Third Gospel, which speaks 
of the shepherd going over the hills of Palestine to seek the 
sheep that was lost ; the other, that from the Fourth Gospel, 
which says, " I am the Good Shepherd," or, as perhaps we 
might venture to translate it, " I am the Beautiful Shepherd." 
This, in that earliest chamber or church of a Christian family 
of which we are chiefly speaking, is the one sign of Christian 
life and of Christian belief. But as it is the only or almost 
the only, sign of Christian belief in this earliest Catacomb, 
so it continues (with those other pictures of which we have 
spoken) always the chief, always the prevailing, sign as long 
as those burial-places were used. Sometimes it is with one 
sheep, sometimes with several sheep in various attitudes ; some 
listening to his voice, some turning away. Sometimes it 
appears in chapels, sometimes on the tombs themselves ; some- 
times on the tombs of the humblest and poorest; sometimes 
in the sepulchres of Emperors and Empresses — Galla Placidia 
and Honorius — but always the chief mark of the Christian 
life and faith. 

On the other hand there is no illusion to the Good Shepherd 
(with one exception) in the writers of the second century, and 
very few in the third; hardly any in Athanasius* or in 
Jerome. If we come down much later, there is hardly any in 
the " Summa Theologian " of Thomas Aquinas, none in the 
Tridentine Catechism, none in the Thirty-nine Articles, none 
in the Westminster Confession. The only prominent allusions 
we find to this figure in the writers of early times are drawn 
from the same under-current of Christian society to which the 
Catacombs themselves belong. One is the allusion, in an 
angry complaint of Tertullian,f to the chalices used in the 

* Origen {Horn. v. on Jeremiah iii., 152) has a somewhat detailed reference. 
His other allusions are of the most perfunctory kind. So also Cyprian 
(Clem. Alex. Peed. i. 7, 9; Strom, i. 26), has similar slight references. There is 
nothing in Irenaeus or Justin, and only three passing notices in Tertullian (De 
Patientid, c. 12; De Pudicitid, c. 9, 16). A more distinct reference is in the 
Acts of Perpetua and Felicitas. ' 

t As this is a singular instance only of a symbolical representation or em- 



THE ROMAN CATACOMBS. 233 

Communion, on which the Good Shepherd was a frequent 
subject ; the other is in the once popular book of devotion, 
the " Pilgrim's Progress " of the Church of the second century, 
which was spread far and wide from Italy even to Greece, 
Egypt, and Abyssinia, namely, the once universal, once canoni- 
cal, once inspired, now forgotten and disparaged, but always 
curious book called the " Shepherd of Hermas." 

This disproportion between the almost total absence of this 
figure in the works of the learned, and its predominant preva- 
lence where we most surely touch the hearts and thoughts of 
the first Christians — this gives the answer to the question, — 
What was the popular Religion of the first Christians ? It 
was, in one word, the Religion of the Good Shepherd. The 
kindness, the courage, the grace, the love, the beauty, of the 
Good Shepherd was to them, if we may so say, Prayer Book 
and Articles, Creed and Canons, all in one. They looked on 
that figure, and it conveyed to them all that they wanted. As 
ages passed on, the Good Shepherd faded away from the mind 
of the Christian world, and other emblems of the Christian 
faith have taken his place. Instead of the gracious and gentle 
Pastor, there came the Omnipotent Judge or the Crucified 
Sufferer, or the Infant in His Mother's arms, or the Master in 
His Parting Supper, or the figures of innumerable saints and 
angels, or the elaborate expositions of the various forms of 
theological controversy. 

These changes may have been inevitable. Christianity is 
too vast and complex to be confined to the expressions of any 
single age, or of any single nation, and what was suitable for 
one age may become unsuited for another. Still, it is useful 
for us to go back to this its earliest form, and ask what must 
have been the ideas suggested by it. , 

(a.) It was an instance of that general connection just now 
noticed between the new Christian belief and the old Pagan 
world. A figure not unlike the Good Shepherd Connection 
had from time to time appeared in the Grecian withhea- 
worship. There was the Hermes Kriophorus — then belief. 
Mercury with the ram — as described by Pausanias. There 

blem, so it is the only instance Petavius pretends to find in all the three first 
ages.'' (Bingham, viii. 8.) So Bingham and Petavius thought. They little 
knew that the Good Shepherd was the constant Christian emblem. 



234 CHRISTIAN INSTITUTIONS. 

were also the figures of dancing shepherds in the tombs of the 
JNasones near Rome. In one instance, in the Christian Cata- 
combs, the Good Shepherd appears surrounded by the Three 
Graces.* In the tomb of Gall a Placidia, He might well be the 
youthful Apollo playing with his pipes to the flocks of Adme- 
tus. There had not yet sprung up the fear of taking as the 
chief symbol of Christianity an idea or a figure which would 
be equally acknowledged by Pagans. 

(b.) It represents to us the joyful, cheerful side of Chris- 
tianity, of which we spoke before. Look at that beautiful, 
The o ous g race ^ u l figure, bounding down as if from his na- 
aspectcf tive hills, with the happy sheep nestling on his 
Christianity shower, with the pastoral pipes in his hand, bloom- 
ing in immortal youth. It is the exact representation of the 
Italian shepherd as we constantly encounter him on the Sabine 
hills at this day, holding the stray lamb on his shoulders, with 
a strong hand grasping the twisted legs as they hang on his 
breast. Just such a one appears on a fresco in the so-called 
house of Livia, on the Palatine. That is the primitive concep- 
tion of the Founder of Christianity. lb is the very reverse of 
that desponding, foreboding, wailing cry that we have often 
heard in later days, as if His religion were going to die out of 
the world ; as if He were some dethroned prince, whose cause 
was to be cherished only by the reactionary, losing, vanquished 
parties of the world or Church. The popular conception of 
Him in the early Church was of the strong, the joyous youth, 
of eternal growth, of immortal grace. 

(c.) It represents to us an aspect of the only Christian belief 
that has not been common in later times, but of which we find 
to. i 4.-4. a occasional traces even in the writings of these ear- 

The latitude ,. . . . J ,, n & . . J - ,, 

of early her centuries, namely, that the first object of the 
Christianity christian community was not to repel, but to in- 
clude — not to condemn, but to save. In some of the paintings 
of the Good Shepherd, this aspect of the subject is emphasized 
by representing the creature on his shoulder to be not a lamb, 
but a kid ; not a sheep, but a goat. 

It is this which provokes the indignant remonstrance of 
Tertullian in the only passage of the Father which contains a 

* De Rossi, ii. 358. 



THE ROMAN CATACOMBS. 235 

distinct reference to the popular representation of the Good 
Shepherd ; and it is on this unchristian protest that Matthew 
Arnold founds one of his most touching poems. 

" He saves the sheep— the goats he doth not save; 
So spake the fierce Tertullian. 

But she sigh'd — 
The infant Church ! of love she felt the tide 
Stream on her from her Lord's yet recent grave, 
And then she smil'd, and in the Catacombs 
With eye suffused, but heart inspired true, 
She her Good Shepherd's hasty image drew, 
And on his shoulder not a lamb, but kid." 

(d.) It represents to us the extreme simplicity of this early- 
belief. It seems as if that key-note was then The simpiic- 
struck in the popular Christianity of those first eJriy Chris- 
ages, which has in its best aspects made it the relig- tianity. 
ion of little children and guileless peasants, and also of child- 
like philosophers and patriarchal sages. 

There is nothing here strange, difficult, mysterious. But 
there was enough to satisfy the early Christian, to nerve the 
suffering martyr, to console the mourner. When Bosio, the 
first explorer of the Catacombs in the seventeenth century, 
opened the tomb of which we have been speaking, he was dis- 
appointed when he found only the Good Shepherd, and went 
on to other later chambers and chapels, where there were other 
more varied pictures, and other more complicated emblems. 
He did not know that this one, which he despised for its sim- 
plicity, was the most interesting of all, because the earliest 
of all. 

It is possible that others, like Bosio, have gone farther and 
fared worse in their dissatisfaction at so simple a representa- 
tion. It is certain, as has been said, that, till quite modern 
times,* the Good Shepherd, and the ideas which the figure 
suggested, had become as strange and rare as the doctrines of 
later times would have seemed strange to the dwellers in the 
Catacombs. 

2. The Good Shepherd, however, is not the only figure 
which pervades the tomb of Domatilla. There is another 
which also, in like manner, predominates elsewhere. 

* It occurs in the pictures of the French Huguenots of the 17th century, 
preserved in the Protestant Library in the Place Vendome. See also Rowland 
Hill's use of it in his Token of Love (Life of Rowland Hill, p. 428.) In the 
latter half of this century it has become popular in the Roman Church. 



236 CHRISTIAN INSTITUTIONS. 

It is a vine painted on the roof and on the walls, with its 
branches spreading and twisting themselves in every direction, 
loaded with clusters of grapes, and seeming to reach 
over the whole chamber. And sometimes this 
figure of the Vine is the only sign of Christian belief. In the 
tomb of Constantia, the sister of the Emperor Constantine, 
even the Good Shepherd does not appear ; the only decora- 
tions that are carved on her coffin and painted on the walls 
are children gathering the vintage, plucking the grapes, carry- 
ing baskets of grapes on their heads, dancing on the grapes to 
press out the wine. The period in which the figure of the 
Vine appears is more restricted than that in which the figure 
of the Shepherd appears. But taking, again, the tomb of 
Domitilla as our main example, it is undeniable that if the 
chief thought of the early Christians was the Good Shepherd, 
the second was the Vine and the Vintage. 

What is the meaning of this ? There are three ideas which 
we may suppose to have been represented. 

(a.) The first is that which we have noticed before — the 
joyous and festive character of the primitive Christian faith. 
its joyous- In Eastern countries the vintage is the great holiday 
ness. f the year. In the Jewish Church there was no 

festival so gay and so free as the Feast of Tabernacles, when 
they gathered the fruit of the vineyard, and enjoyed themselves 
in their green bowers or tabernacles. 

Lord Macaulay once described, with all his force of language 
and variety of illustration, how natural and beautiful was the 
origin of the heathen legend, which represented the victorious 
march of Dionysus, the inventor of the vine, and how every 
one must have been entranced at the coming in of their new 
guest — the arrival of the life-giving grape — scattering joy and 
merriment wherever he came. Something of this kind seems 
to have been the sentiment of the early Christian community. 
No doubt the monastic and the Puritan element existed amongst 
them in germ, and showed itself in the writings even of the 
second and third centuries ; but it is evident from these paint- 
ings that it occupied a very subordinate place in the popular 
mind of the early Roman Christians. 

It may be that the hideous associations which northern 
drunkenness has imported into these festive emblems have 



THE ROMAN CATACOMBS. 237 

rendered impossible to modern times a symbol which in earlier 
days and in southern countries was still permissible. It may 
be that after the disappointments, controversies, persecutions, 
mistakes, scandals, follies of Christendom for the last seventeen 
centuries, it is impossible to imagine that buoyant heart,that 
hopeful spirit, which then was easy and natural. Not the less, 
however, is it instructive for us to see the joyous gayety, the 
innocent Bacchanalia, with which our first fathers started in 
the dawn of that journey which has since been so often over- 
cast. 

(b.) There was, however, perhaps a deeper thought in this 
figure. When we see the vine, with its purple clusters spread- 
ing itself over the roof of the chamber, it is difficult itsdiffu- 
not to feel that the early Christians had before their sion - 
minds the recollection of the Parable of " The Vine and the 
Branches." "When we remark the juice of the grapes stream- 
ing from the feet of those who tread the wine-press — the 
figures, frequent in the Jewish Scriptures, represented in co- 
lossal form over the portal of the Jewish Temple, carved still 
on Jewish sepulchres — it is the same image which culminated 
to the Christian mind in that sacred apologue. It was the 
account which they gave to themselves and to others of the 
benefits of their new religion. What they valued, what they 
felt, was a new moral influence, a new life stealing through 
their veins, a new health imparted to their frames, a new cour- 
age breathing in their faces, like wine to a weary laborer, like 
sap in the hundred branches of a spreading tree, like juice in 
the thousand clusters of a spreading vine. 

Where this life was, there was the sign of their religion. 
By what special channel it came, whether through books or 
treatises, whether through bishops or presbyters, whether 
through this doctrine or that, this the paintings in the Cata- 
combs — at least in the earliest Catacombs — do not tell us. 
All that we see is the Good Shepherd on one side, and the 
spreading Vine and joyous vintage on the other side. It was 
an influence as subtle, as persuasive, as difficult to fix into one 
uniform groove, as what we call the influence of love or mar- 
riage, or law, or civilization. 

(c.) The figure of the Vine, as seen in the Catacombs, sug- 
gests perhaps one other idea — the idea of what was then meant 



238 CHRISTIAN INSTITUTIONS. 

by Christian unity. The branches of the vine are infinite ; no 
other plant throws out so many ramifications which 
twist and clasp and turn and hang and creep and 
rise and fall in so many festoons and roots and clusters and 
branches, over trees and houses ; sometimes high, sometimes 
low, sometimes graceful, sometimes deformed, sometimes 
straight, sometimes crooked. But in all there is the same life- 
giving juice, the same delicious fragrance. That is the figure 
of the Vine as we see it in the tomb of St. Domitilla. It is a 
likeness — whether intended or not — of the variety and unity 
of Christian goodness. 

V. There is one other subject on which we should naturally 
The epi- expect in these Catacombs to learn some tidings of 
taphs. the belief of the early Christians, and that is con- 

cerning the future life and the departed. This we gather 
partly from their paintings, but chiefly from their epitaphs. 

In these representations there are three such characteristics, 
agreeing with what we have already noticed. 

1. First, there is the same simplicity. If for a moment we 
look at the paintings of this subject, in what form are the souls 
Their sim- of the dead presented to us ? Almost always in the 
piicity. form of little birds ; sometimes with bright, gay 

plumage — peacocks, pheasants, and the like ; more often as 
doves. There was here, no doubt, the childlike thought, that 
the soul of man is like a bird of passage, which nestles here in 
the outward frame of flesh for a time, and then flies away be- 
yond the sea to some brighter, warmer home. There was the 
thought that the Christian soul ought to be like " the birds of 
the air," according to the Gospel phrase, without anxiety or 
solicitude. There was the thought also that each Christian 
soul is, like the dove, a messenger of peace, is part of the 
heavenly brood which flies upwards towards that Spirit of 
which it is the emanation and the likeness. 

And when we come to the epitaphs of the ancient dead we 
find still the same simple feeling. There is no long descrip- 
tion ; till the third century, not even the date ; no formal pro- 
fession of belief ; no catalogue either of merits or demerits; 
but, generally speaking, one short word to tell of the tender 
sentiment of natural affection : " My most sweet child ;" " My 
most sweet wife ;" " My most dear husband ;" My innocent 



THE ROMAN CATACOMBS. 239 

dove ;" " My well-deserving father or mother ;" " Innocent 
little lamb ;" " Such and such an one lived together, without 
any complaint or quarrel, without taking or giving offence." 

Amongst all the epitaphs and monuments of Westminster 
Abbey, there is one, and one only, which reminds us of the 
Catacombs. It is that of a little Yorkshire girl, who lies in the 
cloisters and who died in the midst of the troubles which pre- 
ceded the Revolution of 1688. There are just the dates, and 
the name of her brother, whom the parents had lost a short 
time before, and who is buried in St. Helen's Church, in York : 
and all that they say of her or of the crisis of the age is, 
" Jane Lister, dear child.' 1 '' That is exactly like the Catacombs ; 
that is the perpetual sympathy of human nature. In these 
words the whole Christian world, from the nineteenth century 
to the first, " is kino" 

And if, in the outpouring of this natural affection, the 
survivors from time to time refuse to lose sight of the dead in 
the other world, it is still to be remarked that the communion 
with them rests on this family bond, and on none other. 
There is a touching devotional poem of modern date, which 
seems more than any other to recall the peculiar feeling of 
the early Catacombs in this respect. It is that of the Russian 
poet Chamiakoff, on visiting the nursery of his dead children: 

" Time was when I loved at still midnight to come, 
My children, to see you asleep in your room ; 
Dear children, at that same still midnight do ye, 
As I once prayed for you, now in turn pray for me." * 

2. But besides these expressions of natural affection, there 
are two expressions of religious devotion which constantly 
occur. The first is repeated almost in every The idea of 
epitaph — "In peace." It is the phrase which the rest - 
early Christians took from the Jews. In the Jewish Cata- 
combs it is found in the Hebrew word — " Shalom." As the 
expressions just quoted indicate the link between the belief 
of the early Christians and the natural feelings of the human 
heart, so does this indicate the link between their belief and 
that of ancient Judaism. But its earnest reiteration gives a 
special force to it. It conveys their assurance that whatever 

* I have ventured to borrow the translation of the Rev. William Palmer. 



240 CHRISTIAN INSTITUTIONS. 

else was the other world, it was at least a world of rest. The 
wars, the jealousies, the jars, the contentions, the misapprehen- 
sions, the disputes of the Roman Empire and of the Chris- 
tian Church, would there at last be finished. " Sleep " — 
"repose" — is the word — indefinite, but sufficient — for the 
condition of their departed friends. The burial-places of the 
world henceforth became what they were first called in the 
Catacombs — or at least first * called on an extensive scale — 
" cemeteries," that is, " sleeping-places." 

3. There is one other word which occurs frequently after 
The idea of the mention of " peace," and that is, " Live in God" 
immortality or " thou shalt live in God," or "mayest thou live 
in God," or "thou livest in God." This is the yet farther 
step from simple innocence, from Oriental resignation. That 
is the early Christians' expression of the ground of their belief 
in immortality We might perhaps have expected some more 
precise allusion to the sacred name by which they were espe- 
cially called, or to some of those Gospel stories of which we 
do, at least in the third century, find representations in their 
pictures. But in these epitaphs it is not so. They were con- 
tent in the written expression of their belief to repose their 
hopes in the highest name of all. 

These simple words — " Vive in Deo " and " Vivas in Deo " 
— sometimes it is " Vive in Bono'''' — describe what to them 
was the object and the ground of their existence for the first 
three centuries. They last appear in the year 330, and after 
that appear no more again till quite modern times, in express 
imitation of them, as for example in the beautiful epitaph on 
the late lamented Duke John of Torlonia, in the Church of 
St. John Lateran. As a general rule, nowhere now, either in 
Roman Catholic or Protestant churches, do we ever see these 
once universal expressions of the ancient hope. They have 
been superseded by more definite, more detailed, more positive 
statements. Perhaps if they were now used they would be 
thought Deistic, or Theistic, or Pantheistic, or Atheistic. But 
when we reflect upon them, they run very deep down into the 
heart both of philosophy and of Christianity. They express 



* Mommsen says that the words /coiju.i7T^piov, accubitorium, are not exclu- 
sively Christian. But for practical purposes they are so. 



THE ROMAN CATACOMBS. 241 

the hope that, because the Supreme Good lives forever, all 
that is good and true will live forever also. They express the 
hope that because the Universal Father lives forever, we can 
safely trust into His loving hands the souls of those whom we 
have loved, and whom He, we cannot help believing, has loved 
also. 

Perhaps the more we think of this ancient style of epitaph, 
we shall find that it is not the less true because now it is now 
never written ; not the less consoling because it is so ancient ; 
not the less comprehensive because it is so simple, so short, 
and so childlike. 

VI. Let us briefly sum up what has been said on these 
representations of the early Christian belief. 

1. They differ widely in proportion, in selection, and in 
character, from the representations of belief which we find in 
the contemporaneous Christian authors, and thus give us a 
striking example of the divergence which often exists between 
the actual living, popular belief, and that which we find in 
books. They differ also in the same respects, though even 
more widely, from the forms adopted, not only by ourselves, 
but by the whole of Christendom, for nearly fifteen hundred 
years. They show, what it is never without interest to observe, 
the immense divergence in outward expression of belief be- 
tween those ages and our own. The forms which we use were 
unused by them, and the forms which they used, for the most 
part are unused by us. 

2. The substance of the faith which these forms expressed 
is such as, when it is put before us, we at once recognize to be 
true. 

It might sometimes be worth while to ask whether what 
are called attacks or defences of our religion are directed in 
the slightest degree for or against the ideas which, as we have 
seen, constitute the chief materials of the faith and life of the 
early Christians. In a well-known work of Strauss, entitled 
" The Old and New Belief," there is an elaborate attack on 
what the writer calls " the Old Belief." Of the various arti- 
cles of that "old belief" which he enumerates, hardly one 
appears conspicuously in the Catacombs. Of the special forms 
of belief which appear in the Catacombs, hardly one is men- 
tioned in the catalogue of doctrines so vehemently assailed in 
11 



242 CHRISTIAN INSTITUTIONS. 

that work The belief of the Catacombs, as a general rule, is 
not that which is either defended by modern theologians * or 
attacked by modern sceptics. 

3. When we reflect that these same ideas which form the 
all-sufficing creed of the early Church are not openly disputed 
by any Church or sect in Christendom, it may be worth while 
to ask whether, after all, there is anything very absurd in 
supposing that all Christians have something in common with 
each other. The pictures of the Good Shepherd and of the 
Vine, the devotional language of the epitaphs — whether we 
call them sectarian or unsectarian, denominational or unde- 
nominational — have not been watchwords of parties ; no pub- 
lic meetings have been held for defending or abolishing them, 
no persecutions or prosecutions have been set on foot to put 
them down or to set them up. And yet it is certain that, by 
the early Christians, they were not thought vague, fleeting, 
unsubstantial, colorless, but were the food of their daily lives, 
their hope under the severest trials, the dogma of dogmas, if 
we choose so to call them, the creed of their creed, because 
the very life of their life. 

* In the Lateran Museum are two or three compartments of epitaphs 
classed under the head of " illustrations of dogmas. But there is only one 
doubtful example of any passage relating to a dogma controverted by any 
Christian Church. 



THE CREED OF THE EARLY CHRISTIANS. 243 



CHAPTER XIV. 

THE CREED OF THE EARLY CHRISTIANS. 

The formula into which the early Christian belief shaped 
itself has since grown up into the various creeds which have 
been adopted by the Christian Church. The two most widely 
known are that of Chalcedon, commonly called the Nicene 
Creed, and that of the Roman Church, commonly called the 
Apostles'. The first is that which pervaded the Eastern Church. 
Its original form was that drawn up at Nicsea on the basis of 
the creed of Csesarea produced by Eusebius. Large additions 
were made to it to introduce the dogmatical question discussed 
in the Xicene Council. It concluded with anathemas on all 
who pronounced the Son to be of a different Hypostasis from 
the Father. Another Creed much resembling this, but with 
extensive additions at the close, and with an omission of the 
anathemas, was said to have been made at the Constantino- 
politan Council, but was first proclaimed at the Council of 
Chalcedon.* It -underwent a yet further change in the West 
from the adoption of the clause which states that the Holy 
Ghost proceeds from the Son, as well as from the Father. 
The creed of the Roman Church came to be called "the 
Apostles' Creed," from the fable that the twelve Apostles had 
each of them contributed a clause. It was successively en- 
larged. First was added the " Remission of Sins," next " the 
Life Eternal." Then came f the "Resurrection of the Flesh." 
Lastly was incorporated the "Descent J into Hell," and the 

* See Chapter XVI. 

+ This clause unquestionably conveys the belief, so emphatically contra- 
dicted by St. Paul (1 Cor. xv. 35, 36, 50). of the Resurrection of the corporeal 
frame. It has been softened in the modern rendering into the "Resurrec- 
tion of the Body," which, although stiU open to misconception, is capable of 
the spiritual sense of the Apostle. But in the Baptismal Service the original 
clause is presented in its peculiarly offensive form. 

% This was perhaps originally a synonym for " He was buried," as it occurs 
in those versions of the Creed where the burial is omitted. But it soon came 



244 CHRISTIAN INSTITUTIONS. 

" Communion of the Saints." It is observable that the Creed, 
whether in its Eastern or its Western form, leaves out of view- 
altogether such questions as the necessity of Episcopal succes- 
sion, the origin and use of the Sacraments, the honor due to 
the Virgin Mary, the doctrine of Substitution, the doctrine of 
Predestination, the doctrine of Justification, the doctrine of 
the Pope's authority. These may be important and valuable, 
but they are not in any sense part of the authorized creed of 
the early Christians. The doctrine of Baptism appears in the 
Constantinopolitan Creed, but merely in the form of a protest 
against its repetition. The doctrine of Justification might 
possibly be connected with " the Forgiveness of Sins," but no 
theory is expressed on the subject. Again, most of the suc- 
cessive clauses were added for purposes peculiar to that age, 
and run, for the most part, into accidental questions which had 
arisen in the Church. The Conception, the Descent into Hell, 
the Communion of Saints, the Resurrection of the Flesh, are 
found only in the Western, not in the original Nicene Creed. 
The controversial expressions respecting the Hypostasis and 
the Essence of the Divinity are found only in the Eastern, 
not in the Western Creed. 

But there is one point which the two Creeds both have in 
common. It is the framework on which they are formed. 
That framework is the simple expression of faith used in the 
Baptism of the early Christians. It is taken from the First 
Gospel,* and it consists of "the name of the Father, the Son, 
and the Holy Ghost." 

I. It is proposed to ask, in the first instance, the Biblical 
meaning of the words. In the hymn Quicunque vult, as in 
Dean Swift's celebrated " Sermon on the Trinity," there is no 
light whatever thrown on their signification. They are used 
like algebraic symbols, which would be equally appropriate if 



to be used as the expression for that vast system— partly of fantastic super- 
stition, partly of valuable truth— involved in the deliverance of the early 
Patriarchs by the entrance of the Saviour into the world of shades. 

* It is not certain that in early times this formula was in use. The first pro- 
fession of belief was only in the name of the Lord Jesus (Acts ii. 38, viii. 12, 
16, x. 48, xix. 5). In later times, Cyprian (Ep. lxiii.). the Council of Frejus, 
and Pope Nicholas the First acknowledged the validity of this form. Still it 
soon superseded the profession of belief in Jesus Christ, and in the second 
century had become universal. (See Dictionary of Christian Antiquities, i. 
162.) 



THE CREED OF THE EARLY CHRISTIANS. 245 

they -were inverted, or if other words were substituted for 
them. They give no answer to the question what in the minds 
of the early Christians they represented. 

1. What, then, is meant in the Bible — what in the experi- 
ence of thoughtful men — by the name of The Father t In one 
word it expresses to us the whole faith of what wo call Natural 
Religion. We see it in all religions. " Not only is the omni- 
presence of something which passes comprehension, that most 
distinct belief which is common to all religions, which becomes 
the more distinct in proportion as things develop, and which 
remains after their discordant elements have been cancelled ; 
but it is that belief which the most unsparing criticism leaves 
unquestionable, or rather makes ever clearer. It has nothing 
to fear from the most inexorable logic ; but, on the contrary, 
is a belief which the most inexorable logic shows to be more 
profoundly true than any religion supposes." * As mankind 
increases in civilization, there is an increasing perception of 
order, design, and good-will towards the living creatures which 
animate it. Often, it is true, we cannot trace any such design ; 
but whenever we can, the impression left upon us is the sense 
of a Single, Wise, Beneficent Mind. And in our own hearts 
and consciences we feel an instinct corresponding to this — a 
voice, a faculty, that seems to refer us to a Higher Power than 
ourselves, and to point to some Invisible Sovereign Will, like 
to that which we see impressed on the natural world. And, 
further, the more we think of the Supreme, the more we try to 
imagine what His feelings are towards us — the more our idea 
of Him becomes fixed as in the one simple, all-embracing word 
that He is the Father. The word itself has been given to us 
by Christ. It is the peculiar revelation of the Divine nature 
made by Christ Himself. Whereas it is used three times in 
the Old Testament, it is used two hundred times in the New. 
But it was the confirmation of what was called by Tertullian 
the testimony of the naturally Christian soul — testimonium 
animal naturaliter Christiana?. The Greek expression of " the 
Father of Gods and men " is an approach towards it. There 
may be much in the dealings of the Supreme and Eternal that 
we do not understand ; as there is much in the dealings of an 

* Herbert Spencer, First Principles, p. 45. 



246 CHRISTIAN INSTITUTIONS. 

earthly father that his earthly children cannot understand. 
Yet still to be assured that there is One above us whose praise 
is above any human praise — who sees us as we really are — who 
has our welfare at heart in all the various dispensations which 
befall us — whose wide-embracing justice and long-suffering and 
endurance we all may strive to obtain — this is the foundation 
with which everything in all subsequent religion must be made 
to agree. " One thing alone is certain : the Fatherly smile 
which every now and then gleams through Nature, bearing 
witness that an Eye looks down upon us, that a Heart follows 
us." * To strive to be perfect as our Father is perfect is the 
greatest effort which the human soul can place before itself. 
To repose upon this perfection is the greatest support which in 
sorrow and weakness it can have in making those efforts. This 
is the expression of Natural Religion. This is the revelation 
of God the Father. 

2. What is meant by the name of the Son? 

It has often happened that the conception of Natural Reli- 
gion becomes faint and dim. "The being of a God is as cer- 
tain to me as the certainty of my own existence. Yet when I 
look out of myself into the world of men, I see a sight which 
fills me with unspeakable distress. The rorld of men seems 
simply to give the lie to that great truth of which my whole 
being is so full. If I looked into a mirror and did not see my 
face, I should experience the same sort of difficulty that ac- 
tually comes upon me when I look into this living busy world 
and see no reflection of its Creator." j How is this difficulty 
to be met? How shall we regain in the vorld of men the 
idea which the world of Nature has suggested to us? How 
shall the dim remembrance of our Universal Father be so 
brought home to us as that we shall not forget it or lose it ? 
This is the object of the Second Sacred Name by which God 
is revealed to us. As in the name of the Father we have Natu- 
ral Religion — the Faith of the Natural Conscience — so in the 
name of the Son we have Historical Religion, or the Faith of 
the Christian Church. As "the Father" represents to us God 
in Nature, God in the heavenly or ideal world — so the name of 
" the Son " represents to us God in History, God in the char- 

* Renan's Hibbert Lectures for 1880, p. 202. 
t Dr. Newman, Apologia, p. 241. 



THE CREED OF THE EARLY CHRISTIANS. 247 

acter of man, God above all, in the Person of Jesus Christ. 
We know how even in earthly relationships an absent father, a 
departed father, is brought before our recollections in the ap- 
pearance of a living, present son, especially in a son who by 
the distinguishing features of his mind or of his person is a real 
likeness of his father. We know also how in the case of those 
whom we have never seen at all there is still a means of com- 
munication with them through reading their letters, their 
works, their words. So it is in this second great disclosure of 
the Being of God. If sometimes we find that Nature gives us 
an uncertain sound of the dealings of God with his creatures, 
if we find a difficulty in imagining what is the exact character 
that God most approves, we may be reassured, strengthened, 
fixed, by hearing or reading of Jesus Christ. The Mahometan 
rightly objects to the introduction of the paternal and filial 
relations into the idea of God, when they are interpreted in 
the gross and literal sense. But in the moral and spiritual 
sense it is true that the kindness, tenderness, and wisdom we 
find in Jesus Christ is the reflection of the same kindness, 
tenderness, and wisdom that we recognize in the governance of 
the universe. His life is the Word, the speech that comes to us 
out of that eternal silence which surrounds the Unseen Divinity. 
He is the Second Conscience, the external Conscience, reflect- 
ing, as it were, and steadying the conscience within each of us. 
And wheresoever in history the same likeness is, or has been, 
in any degree reproduced in human character, there and in 
that proportion is the same effect produced. There and in 
that proportion is the Word which speaks through every word 
of human wisdom, and the Light which lightens with its own 
radiance every human act of righteousness and of goodness. 
In the Homeric representations of Divinity and of Humanity, 
what most strikes us is that, whereas the human characters are, 
in their measure, winning, attractive, heroic, the divine char- 
acters are capricious, cruel, revengeful, sensual. Such an in- 
version of the true standard is rectified by the identification of 
the Divine nature with the character of Christ. If in Christ 
the highest human virtues are exalted to their highest pitch, 
this teaches us that, according to the Christian view, in the 
Divine nature these same virtues are still to be found. If 
cruelty, caprice, revenge, are out of place in Christ, they are 



248 CHRISTIAN INSTITUTIONS. 

equally out of place in God. To believe in the name of Christ, 
in the name of the Son, is to believe that God is above all 
other qualities a Moral Being — a Being not merely of power 
and wisdom, but a Being of tender compassion, of boundless 
charity, of discriminating tenderness. To believe in the name 
of Christ is to believe that no other approach to God exists 
except through those same qualities of justice, truth, and love 
which make up the mind of Christ. "Ye believe in God, 
believe also in me," is given as His own farewell address. Ye 
believe in the Father, ye believe in Religion generally ; believe 
also in the Son, the Christ. For this is the form in which the 
Divine Nature has been made most palpably known to the 
world, in flesh and blood, in facts and words, in life and death. 
This is the claim that Christianity and Christendom have upon 
us, with all their infinite varieties of institutions, ordinances, 
arts, laws, liberties, charities — that they spring forth directly or 
indirectly from the highest earthly manifestation of Our Un- 
seen Eternal Father. 

The amplifications in the Eastern and "Western Creeds have, 
it is true, but a very slight bearing on the nature of the Divine 
Revelation in Jesus Christ. They do not touch at all (except 
in the expression "Light of Light") on the moral, which is the 
only important, aspect of the doctrine. They entirely (as was 
observed many years ago by Bishop Thirlwall) "miss the 
point." Bishop Pearson, in his elaborate dissertation on this 
article of the Creed, is Avholly silent on this subject. These 
expositions do not tell us whether the Being of whom they 
speak was good or wicked, mild or fierce, truthful or untruth- 
ful. The Eastern Creed by its introduction of the expressions 
"for us," "for our salvation," to a certain extent conveys the 
idea that the good of man was the purpose for which He lived 
and suffered. But the Western Creed does not contain even 
these expressions. The Fifteenth of the XXXIX. Articles, 
and by implication a single phrase in the Seventeenth, are the 
only ones which express any belief in the moral excellence of 
Christ. The Second, Third, Fourth, Fifth, Thirty-first, which 
speak on the general subject of His person, are silent on this 
aspect. The clause which related to the moral side of the 
Saviour's character, " Who lived amongst men," had been in the 
Palestine Creed, but was struck out of the Eastern Creed at the 



THE GREED OF THE EARLY CHRISTIANS. 249 

Council of Nicsea. But nevertheless the original form of the 
belief in "the only Son" remains intact and acknowledged by 
all. It contains nothing contrary to His moral perfections ; and 
it may admit them all. We take the story of the Gospels as it 
has appeared to Voltaire, Rousseau, Goethe. We take it in 
those parts which contain least matter for doubts and difficul- 
ties. We speak of "the method" and "the secret" of Jesus 
as they have been presented to us in the most modern works. 
" The origin of Christianity forms the most heroic episode of 
the history of humanity. . . . Never was the religious con- 
sciousness more eminently creative ; never did it lay down with 
more absolute authority the law of the future." * It is impor- 
tant to notice that the testimonies to the greatness of this 
historical revelation are not confined to the ordinary writers on 
the subject, but are even more powerfully expressed in those 
who are above the slightest suspicion of any theological bias. 

It is not the Bishop of Gloucester and Bristol, it is Matthew 
Arnold, who affirms, — 

" Try all the ways to righteousness you can think of, and you 
will find that no way brings you to it except the way of Jesus, but 
that this way does bring you to it." 

It is not Bishop Lightfoot, it is the author of " Supernatural 
Religion," who asserts, — 

"The teaching of Jesus carried morality to the sublimest point 
attained, or even attainable by humanity. The influence of His 
spiritual religion has been rendered doubly great by the unparal- 
leled purity and elevation of His own character. Surpassing in 
His sublime simplicity and earnestness the moral grandeur of 
Chakya-Mouni, and putting to the blush the sometimes sullied, 
though generally admirable, teaching of Socrates and Plato, and 
the whole round of Greek philosophers, He presented the rare spec- 
tacle of a life, so far as we can estimate it, uniformly noble and 
consistent with His own lofty principles, so that the * imitation of 
Christ ' has become almost the final word in the preaching of His 
religion, and must continue to be one of the most powerful ele- 
ments of its permanence." 

It is not Lord Shaftesbury, it : s the author of " Ecce Homo," 
who says, — 

" The story of His life will always remain the one record in 

* Kenan's Hibhert Lectures for 1880, p. 8, 
11* 



250 CHRISTIAN INSTITUTIONS. 

which the moral perfection of man stands revealed in its root and 
unity, the hidden spring made palpably manifest by which the 
whole machine is moved. And as, in the will of God, this uniqut 
man was elected to a unique sorrow, and holds as undisputed a 
sovereignty in suffering as in self-devotion, all lesser examples and 
lives will forever hold a subordinate place, and serve chiefly to 
reflect light on the central and original example." 

It is no Bampton lecturer, it is John Stuart Mill, who says, — 

"It is the God incarnate, more than the God of the Jews or of 
Nature, who, being idealized, has taken so great and salutary a 
hold on the modern mind. And whatever else may be taken away 
from us by rational criticism, Christ is still left, — a unique figure, 
not more unlike all His precursors than all His followers, even 
those who had the direct benefit of His teaching." 

It is not Lacordaire, it is Renan, who affirms, — 

"In Jesus was condensed all that is good and elevated in our 
nature. . . . God is in Him. He feels Himself with God, and 
He draws from His own heart what He tells of His Father. He 
lives in the bosom of God by the intercommunion of every mo- 
ment."* 

Those few years in which that Life was lived on earth gath- 
ered up all the historical expressions of religion before and 
after into one supreme focus. The "Word made flesh" 
was the union of religion and morality, was the declaration 
that in the highest sense the Image of Man was made after the 
Image of God. "^Sterna sapientia sese in omnibus rebus, 
maxime in humana, mente, omnium maxime in Christo Jesu man- 
ifestavit." \ In the gallery through which, in Goethe's " Wil- 
helm Meister," the student is led to understand the origin and 
meaning of religion, he is taught to see in the child which looks 
upwards the reverence for that which is above us — that is, the 
worship of the Father. "This religion we denominate the 
Ethnic ; it is the religion of the nations, and the first happy 
deliverance from a degrading fear." He is taught to see in 
the child which looks downwards the reverence for that which 
is beneath us. " This we name tlp.e Christian. What a task 
it was .... to recognize humility and poverty, mockery and 
despising, disgrace and wretchedness and suffering — to recog- 

* This series of extracts is quoted from an admirable sermon by Mr. Muir, 
preached before the Synod of Lothian and Tweeddale November 5, 1879. 
t Spinoza, Ep. xxi. vol. iii. p. 195. 



THE GREED OF THE EARLY CHRISTIANS. 251 

nize these things as divine." This is the value of what we 
call Historical Religion. This is the eternal, never-dying truth 
of the sacred name of the Son. 

3. But there is yet a third manifestation of God. Natural 
religion -may become vague and abstract. Historical religion 
may become, as it often has become, perverted, distorted, ex- 
hausted, formalized ; its external proofs may become dubious, 
its inner meaning may be almost lost. There have been often- 
times Christians who were not like Christ — a Christianity 
which was not the religion of Christ. But there is yet another 
aspect of the Divine Nature. Besides the reverence for that 
which is above us, and the reverence for that which is beneath 
us, there is also the reverence for that which is within us. 
There is yet (if we may venture to vary Goethe's parable) 
another form of Religion, and that is Spiritual Religion. As 
the name of the Father represents to us God in Nature, as the 
name of the Son represents to us God in History, so the name 
of the Holy Ghost represents to us God in our own hearts and 
spirits and consciences. This is the still, small voice — stillest 
and smallest, yet loudest and strongest of all — which, even 
more than the wonders of nature or the wonders of history, 
brings us into the nearest harmony with Him who is a Spirit — 
who, when His closest communion with man is described, can 
only be described as the Spirit pleading with, and dwelling in, 
our spirit. When Theodore Parker took up a stone to throw 
at a tortoise in a pond, he felt himself restrained by something 
within him. He went home and asked his mother what that 
something was. She told him that this something was what 
was commonly called conscience, but she preferred to call it 
the voice of God within him. This, he said, was the turning- 
point in his life, and this was his mode of accepting the truth 
of the Divinity of the Eternal Spirit that speaks to our spirits. 
When Arnold entered with all the ardor of a great and gener- 
ous nature into the beauty of the natural world, he added : " If 
we feel thrilling through us the sense of this natural beauty, 
what ought to be our sense of moral beauty, — of humbleness, 
and truth, and self-devotion, and love ? Much more beautiful, 
because more truly made after God's image, are the forms and 
colors of kind and wise and holy thoughts and words and 
actions — m )re truly beautiful is one hour of an aged peasant's 



£52 CHBISTIAN INSTITUTIONS. 

patient cheerfulness and faith than the most glorious scene 
which this earth can show. For this moral beauty is actually, 
so to speak, God Himself, and not merely His work. His liv- 
ing and conscious servants are — it is permitted us to say so — 
the temples of which the light is God Himself." 

What is here said of the greatness of the revelation of God 
in the moral and spiritual sphere over His revelation in the 
physical world, is true in a measure of its greatness over His 
revelation in any outward form or fact, or ordinance or word. 
To enter fully into the significance of what is sometimes called 
the Dispensation of the Holy Spirit, we must grasp the full 
conception of what in the Bible is meant by that sacred word, 
used in varying yet homogeneous senses, and all equally in- 
tended by the Sacred Name of which we are speaking. It 
means the Inspiring Breath,* without which all mere forms 
and facts are dead, and by which all intellectual and moral 
energy lives. It means j- the inward spirit as opposed to the 
outward letter. It means the freedom of the spirit, which 
blows like the air of heaven where it listeth, and which, 
wherever it prevails, gives liberty. J It means the power and 
energy of the spirit, which rises above the§ weakness and 
weariness of the flesh — which, in the great movements of 
Providence, || like a mighty rushing wind, gives life and vigor 
to the human soul and to the human race. 

" One accent of the Holy Ghost 
The heedless world has never lost." 

To believe in a Presence^ within us pleading with our 
prayers, groaning with our groans, aspiring with our aspira- 
tions — to believe in the Divine supremacy of conscience — to 
believe that the spirit is above the letter — to believe that the 
substance is above the form** — to believe that the meaning is 
more important than the words — to believe that truth is 
greater than authority or fashion or imagination,! f and will at 
last prevail — to believe that goodness and justice and love are 



* Gen. i. 2, vi. 3; Exod. xxxv. 31; Judges xi. 29, xiii. 25, xiv. 6, 19, xv. 14; Isa. 
lxi. 1; Eph. i. 12, iii. 12, xxxiii. 14; Luke iv. 18; John i. 33. 
t Psalm li. 10, 11, 12; 2 Cor. iii. 6. % John iii. 8; 2 Cor. iii. 88. 

§ Matt. xxvi. 41. || Acts ii. 4, 17. 

1 Rom. viii. 16, 26; Eph. ii. 18. ** John iv. 25. 

•tt Gal. v. 22; Eph. v. 9. 



THE CREED OF THE EARLY CHRISTIANS. 253 

the bonds of perfectness,* without which whosoever liveth is 
counted dead though he live, and which bind together those 
who are divided in all other things whatsoever — this, according 
to the Biblical uses of the word, is involved in the expression : 
" I believe in the Holy Ghost." In this sense there is a close 
connection between the later additions of the Creeds and the 
original article on which they depend. The Universal Church, 
the Forgiveness of Sins, are direct results of the influence of 
the Divine Spirit on the heart of man. The hope of " the 
Resurrection of the Dead and of the Life of the World to 
come," as expressed in the Eastern Creed, are the best ex- 
pressions of its vitality. The Communion of Saints in the 
Western Creed is a beautiful expression of its pervasive force. 
Even the untoward expression, " the Resurrection of the 
flesh," may be taken as an awkward indication of the same 
aspiration for the triumph of mind over matter. 

II. Such is the significance of these three Sacred Names as we 
consider them apart. Let us now consider what is to be learned 
from their being thus made the summary of Religion. 

1. First it may be observed that there is this in common 
between the Biblical and the scholastic representations of the 
doctrine of the Trinity. They express to us the comprehen- 
siveness and diversity of the Divine Essence. We might per- 
haps have thought that as God is One, so there could be only 
one mode of conceiving Him, one mode of approaching Him. 
But the Bible, when taken from first to last and in all its parts, 
tells us that there is yet a greater, wider view. The nature of 
God is vaster and more complex than can be embraced in any 
single formula. As in His dealings with men generally, it has 
been truly said that 

"God doth fulfil Himself in many ways, 
Lest one good custom should corrupt the world," 

so out of these many ways and many names we learn from the 
Bible that there are especially these three great revelations, 
these three ways in which He can be approached. None of 
them is to be set aside. It is true that the threefold name of 
which we are speaking is never in the Bible brought forward 
in the form of an unintelligible mystery. It is certain that 

* John xiv. 17, 26; xv. 26; xvi. 13. 



254 CHRISTIAN INSTITUTIONS. 

the only place * where it is put before us as an arithmetical 
enigma is now known to be spurious. Yet it is still the fact 
that the indefinite description of the Power that governs all 
things is a wholesome rebuke to that readiness to dispose of 
the whole question of the Divine nature, as if God were a 
man, a person like ourselves. The hymn of Reginald Heber, 
which is one of the few in which the feeling of the poet and 
the scholar is interwoven with the strains of simple devo- 
tion — 

" Holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty"— 

refuses to lend itself to any anthropomorphic speculations, 
and takes refuge in abstractions as much withdrawn from the 
ordinary figures of human speech and metaphor, as if it had 
been composed by Kant or Hegel. To acknowledge this 
triple form of revelation, to acknowledge this complex aspect 
of the Deity, as it runs through the multiform expressions of 
the Bible — saves, as it were, the awe, the reverence due to the 
Almighty Ruler of the universe, tends to preserve the balance 
of truth from any partial or polemical bias, presents to us not 
a meagre, fragmentary view of only one part of the Divine 
Mind, but a wide, catholic summary of the whole, so far as 
nature, history, and experience permit. If we cease to think 
of the Universal Father, we become narrow and exclusive. 
If we cease to think of the Founder of Christianity and of 
the grandeur of Christendom, we lose our hold on the great 
historic events which have swayed the hopes and affections of 
man in the highest moments of human progress. If we cease 
to think of the Spirit, we lose the inmost meaning of Creed 
and Prayer, of Church and Bible, of human character, and of 
vital religion. In that apologue of Groethe before quoted, 
when the inquiring student asks his guides who have shown 
him the three forms of reverence, " To which of these religions 
do you adhere?" "To all the three," they reply, "for in 
their union they produce the true religion, which has been 
adopted, though unconsciously, by a great part of the world." 
" How, then, and where ? " exclaimed the inquirer. " In the 
Creed," replied they. " For the first article is ethnic, and be- 
longs to all nations. The second is Christian, and belongs to 

* 1 John v. 7. 



THE CREED OF THE EARL 7 CHRISTIANS. 255 

those struggling with affliction, glorified in affliction. The 
third teaches us an inspired communion of saints. And 
should not the three Divine Persons * justly be considered as 
in the highest sense One ? " 

2. And yet on the other hand, when we pursue each of 
these sacred words into its own recesses, we may be thankful 
that we are thus allowed at times to look upon each as though 
each for the moment were the whole and entire name of which 
we are in search. There are in the sanctuaries of the old 
churches of the East on the Mount Athos sacred pictures in- 
tended to represent the doctrine of the Trinity, in which, as 
the spectator stands at one side, he sees only the figure of Our 
Saviour on the Cross, as he stands on the other side he sees 
only the Heavenly Dove, as he stands in the front he sees 
only the Ancient of Days, the Eternal Father. So it is with 
the representations of this truth in the Bible, and, we may 
add, in the experiences of religious life. 

Sometimes, as in the Old Testament, especially in the 
Psalms, we are alone with God, we trust in Him, we are His 
and He is ours. The feeling that He is our Father, and that 
we are His children, is all-sufficing. We need not be afraid so 
to think of Him. Whatever other disclosures He has made of 
Himself are but the filling up of this vast outline. Whatever 
other belief we have or have not, cling to this. By this faith 
lived many in Jewish times, who obtained a good report, even 
when they had not received the promise. By this faith have 
lived m^ny a devout sage and hero of the ancient world, 
whom He assuredly will not reject. So long as we have a 
hope that this Supreme Existence watches over the human 
race — so long as this great Ideal remains before us, the 
material world has not absorbed our whole being, has not 
obscured the whole horizon. 

Sometimes, again, as in the Gospels or in particular 
moments of life, we see no revelation of God except in the 
world of history. There are those to whom science is 
dumb, to whom nature is dark, but who find in the life 
of Jesus Christ all that they need. He is to them the all 

* Goethe probably used this expression as the one that came nearest to 
hand. To make it correct, it must be taken, not in the modern sense of indi- 
vidual beings, but in the ancient sense of " Hypostasis," or "groundwork." 



256 CHBISTIAN INSTITUTIONS. 

in all, the True, the Holy, the express image of the Highest. 
We need not fear to trust Him. The danger hitherto has been 
not that we can venerate Him too much, or that we can think 
of Him too much. The error of Christendom has far more 
usually been that it has not thought of Him half enough — that 
it has put aside the mind of Christ, and taken in place thereof 
the mind of Augustine, Aquinas, Calvin, great in their way, — 
but not the mind of Him of whom we read in Matthew, Mark, 
Luke, and John. Or if we should combine with the thought 
of Him the thought of others foremost in the religious history 
of mankind, we have His own command to do so, so far as 
they are the likenesses of Himself, or so far as they convey to 
us any sense of the unseen world, or any lofty conception of 
human character. With the early Christian writers, we may 
believe that the Word, the Wisdom of God which appeared 
in its perfection in Jesus of Nazareth, had appeared in a meas- 
ure in the examples of virtue and wisdom which had been seen 
before His coming. On the same principle we may apply this 
to those who have appeared since. He has Himself told us 
that in His true followers He is with mankind to the end of 
the world. In the holy life, in the courageous act, in the just 
law, is the Real Presence of Christ. Where these are, in pro- 
portion as they recall to us His divine excellence, there, far 
more than in any consecrated form or symbol, is the true wor- 
ship due from a Christian to his Master. 

Sometimes, again, as in the Epistles, or in our own solitary 
communing with ourselves, all outward manifestations of the 
Father and of the Son, of outward nature and of Christian 
communion, seem to be withdrawn, and the eye of our mind 
is fixed on the Spirit alone. Our light then seems to come 
not from without but from within, not from external evidence 
but from inward conviction. That itself is a divine revelation. 
For the Spirit is as truly a manifestation of God as is the Son 
or the Father. The teaching of our own heart and conscience 
is enough. If we follow the promptings of truth and purity, 
of justice and humility, sooner or later we shall come back to 
the same Original Source. The witness of the Spirit of all 
goodness is the same as the witness of the life of Jesus, the 
same as the witness of the works of God our Creator. 

3. This distinction, which applies to particular wants of the 



THE GREED OF THE EARLY CHRISTIANS. 257 

life of each man, may be especially traced in the successive 
stages of the spiritual growth of individuals and of the human 
race itself. There is a beautiful poem of a gifted German 
poet of this century, in which he describes his wanderings in 
the Hartz Mountains, and as he rests in the house of a moun- 
tain peasant, a little child, the daughter of the house, sits at 
his feet, and looks up in his troubled countenance, and asks, 
"Dost thou believe in the Father, the Son, and the Holy 
Ghost?" He makes answer in words which must be read in 
the original to see their full force. He says : " When I sat as 
a boy on my mother's knees, and learned from her to pray, I 
believed on God the Father, who reigns aloft so great and 
good, who created the beautiful earth and the beautiful men 
and women that are upon it, who to sun and moon and stars 
foretold their appointed course. And when I grew a little 
older and bigger, then I understood more and more, then I 
took in new truth with my reason and my understanding, and 
I believed on the Son — the well-beloved Son, who in His love 
revealed to us what love is, and who for His reward, as always 
happens, was crucified by the senseless world. And now that 
I am grown up, and that I have read many books and travelled 
in many lands, my heart swells, and with all my heart I be- 
lieve in the Holy Ghost, the Spirit of God. It is this Spirit 
which works the greatest of miracles, and shall work greater 
miracles than we have yet seen. It is this Spirit which breaks 
down all the strongholds of oppression and sets the bondsmen 
free. It is this Spirit which heals old death-wounds and 
throws into the old law new life. Through this Spirit it is 
that all men become a race of nobles, equal in the sight of 
God. Through this Spirit are dispersed the black clouds and 
dark cobwebs that bewilder our hearts and brains." 

" A thousand knights in armor clad 

Hath the Holy Ghost ordained, 
All His work and will to do, 

By His living force sustained. 
Bright their swords, their banners bright; 
Who would not be ranked a knight, 

Foremost in that sacred host? 
Oh, whate'er our race or creed, 
May we be such knights indeed, 

Soldiers of the Holy Ghost." 

III. The name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost 
will never cease to be the chief expression of Christian belief, 



258 CHRISTIAN INSTITUTIONS. 

and it has been endeavored to show what is the true meaning 
of them. The words probably from the earliest time fell short 
of this high signification. Even in the Bible they needed all 
the light which experience could throw upon them to suggest 
the full extent of the meaning of which they are capable. But 
it is believed that on the whole they contain or suggest 
thoughts of this kind, and that in this development of their 
meaning, more than in the scholastic systems built upon them 
or beside them, lies their true vitality. 

" Apparet domus intus, et atria longa patescunt." 

The true interest of the collocation of these three words in the 
Baptismal formula instead of any others that might have 
found a place there, is not that the Christians of the second 
or third century attached to them their full depth of meaning, 
but that they are too deeply embedded in the Biblical records 
to have been effaced in those ages by any heterogeneous 
speculation, and that, when we come to ask their meaning, 
they yield a response which the course of time has rather 
strengthened than enfeebled. However trite and common- 
place appear to us the truths involved in them, they were far 
from obvious to those early centuries, which worked upon 
them for the most part in senses quite unlike the profound 
religious revelations which are becoming to us so familiar. 
And then there still remains the universal and the deeper 
truth within. In Christianity nothing is of real concern ex- 
cept that which makes us wiser and better ; everything which 
does make us wiser and better is the very thing which Chris- 
tianity intends. Therefore even in these three most sacred 
words there is yet, besides all the other meanings which we 
have found in them, the deepest and most sacred meaning of 
all — that which corresponds to them in the life of man. Many 
a one has repeated this Sacred Name, and yet never fulfilled 
in himself the truths which it conveys. Some have been un- 
able to repeat it, and yet have grasped the substance which 
alone gives to it a spiritual value. What John Bunyan said on 
his death-bed concerning prayer is equally true of all religious 
forms : " Let thy heart be without words rather than thy 
words without heart." Wherever we are taught to know and 
understand the real nature of the world in which our lot is 



THE CREED OF THE EARLY CHRISTIANS. 259 

cast, there is a testimony, however humble, to the name of the 
Father ; wherever we are taught to know and admire the 
highest and best of human excellence, there is a testimony to 
the name of the Son ; wherever we learn the universal appre- 
ciation of such excellence, there is a testimony to the name of 
the Holy Ghost. 



260 CHRISTIAN INSTITUTION*. 



CHAPTER XV. 

THE LORD'S PRATER. 

No one doubts that the Lord's Prayer entered into all 
the Liturgical observances of the Early Church. No one 
questions its fundamental value. 

1. First, let us observe the importance of having such a form 
at all as the Lord's Prayer left to us by the Founder of our 
faith. It was said once by a Scottish statesman, " Give to any 
one you like the making of a nation's laws — give me the mak- 
ing of their ballads and songs, and that will tell us the mind of 
the nation." So it might be said, " Give to any one you like 
the making of a Church's creed — or a Church's decrees or 
rubrics — give me the making of its prayers, and that will tell 
us the mind of the Church or religious community." We 
have in this Prayer the one public universal prayer of Christen- 
dom. It contains the purest wishes, the highest hopes, the 
tenderest aspirations which our Master put into the mouths 
of His followers. It is the rule of our worship, the guide 
of our inmost thoughts. This prayer on the whole has been 
accepted by all the Churches of the world. In the English 
Liturgy it is repeated in ever single service — too often for pur- 
poses of edification. The reason evidently is because it was 
thought that no service could be complete without it. This is 
the excuse for what otherwise would seem to be a vain repeti- 
tion. Again, it is used so frequently in the Roman Catholic 
Church that its two first words have almost passed into a name 
for a prayer generally — Pater Noster — which is the Latin of 
" Our Father." It has been translated into almost all languages. 
It is used, at least in modern times, in all the Presbyterian 
churches of Scotland, and in most of the English Noncon- 
formist churches. However great may be the scruples which 
any community may entertain against set forms, there is 
hardly any which will refuse to use this prayer. The Society 



THE LORD'S PRAYER. 2Q1 

of Friends is probably the only exception. Whatever may be 
the case with other formularies or catechisms, this at least 
is not a distinctive formulary ; it is common to the whole 
of Christendom — nay, as we shall see, it is common to the 
whole of mankind. Luther calls it " the Prayer of Prayers." 
Baxter says, "The Lord's Prayer, with the Creed and Ten 
Commandments, the older I grew, furnished me with a most 
plentiful and acceptable matter for all my meditations." Arch- 
bishop Leighton, the only man who was almost successful 
in joining together the Churches of England and Scotland, 
was, we are told, especially partial to the Lord's Prayer, and 
said of it, " Oh, the spirit of this prayer would make rare 
Christians." Bossuet, the most celebrated of French divines, 
and Channing, the most celebrated of American divines, both 
repeated it on their death-beds. Channing said, " This is the 
perfection of the Christian Religion." Bossuet said, " Let us 
read and re-read incessantly the Lord's Prayer. It is the true 
prayer of Christians, and the most perfect, for it contains all." 
On the day of his execution it was repeated by Count Egmont, 
leader of the insurrection in the Netherlands. On the day of 
his mortal illness it summed up the devotions of the Emperor 
Nicholas of Russia. Even those who knew nothing about it 
have acknowledged its excellence. A French countess read 
this prayer to her unbelieving husband in a dangerous illness. 
"Say that again," he said, "it is a beautiful prayer. Who 
made it?" 

2. Again, in the Early Church it was the only set form of 
Liturgy. It was, so to speak, the whole Liturgy ; it was the 
only set form of prayer then used in the celebration of the 
Holy Communion. Whatever other prayers were used were 
offered up according to the capacity and choice of the mini- 
ster.* But there was one prayer fixed and universal and that 
was the Lord's Prayer. The Clementine Liturgy alone omits 
it. From that unique position it has been gradually pushed 
aside by more modern prayers. But the recollection of its 
ancient pre-eminent dignity is still retained in the older liturgies 
by its following immediately after the consecration prayer; 
and in the modern English Liturgy, although it has been yet 

* See Chapter III. 



262 CHRISTIAN INSTITUTIONS. 

further removed, yet its high importance in the service is indi- 
cated by its being used twice — once at the commencement and 
immediately after the administration. Whenever we so hear 
it read we are reminded of its original grandeur as the root of 
all liturgical eucharistic services everywhere, It is an indica- 
tion partly of the immense change which has taken place in all 
liturgies : it shows how far even the most ancient that exist 
have departed from their original form. But it reminds us 
also what is the substance of the whole Communion service ; 
what is the spirit by which and in which alone the blessings 
of that service can be received. 

3. And now let us look at its outward shape. What do we 
learn from this ? We may infer from the occurrence of any 
form at all in the teaching of Christ that set forms of prayer 
are not in themselves wrong. He, when He was asked by His 
disciples, " Teach us to pray," did not say, as he might have 
done, " Never use any form of words — wait till the Spirit 
moves you — take no thought how you shall speak, for it shall 
be given you in the same hour what you should speak — * out 
of the abundance of your heart your mouth shall speak.' " 
There are times when He did so speak. But at any rate on 
two occasions He is reported to have given a fixed form of 
words. But as He gave a fixed form, so neither did he bind 
His disciples to every word of it always and exclusively. He 
did not say, " In these words pray ye," but on one occasion, 
" After this manner pray ye." And as if to bring out still 
more distinctly that even in this most sacred of all prayers it 
is the spirit and not the letter that is of any avail, there are 
two separate forms of it given in the Gospels according to St. 
Matthew and St. Luke, which, though the same in substance, 
differ much in detail. " Give us this day our daily bread " it 
is in St. Matthew ; " Give us day by day our daily bread " it is 
in St. Luke. " Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors," 
it is in St. Matthew ; " Forgive us our sins ; for we also forgive 
every one that is indebted to us," it is in St. Luke. And yet, 
besides, it may be observed that there is a still further varia- 
tion in the Lord's Prayer as we read it in the English Liturgy 
from the form in which we read it in the Authorized Version 
of the Bible — " Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive them 
that trespass against us," is a petition that is the same in sense 



THE LORD'S PRAYER. 263 

but different in words from what it is either in St. Matthew or 
St. Luke. And again, what we call the doxology at the end, 
" For thine is the kingdom, and the power and the glory," is 
not found at all in St. Luke, nor in the oldest manuscripts of 
St. Matthew, and is never used at all in the oldest Churches of 
Europe. The Roman Catholic Church absolutely rejects it. 
The Greek reads it but not as part of the Lord's Prayer. 
Pope, the Roman Catholic poet, imagined that it was written 
by Luther. All these variations show the difference between 
the spirit and the substance, between the form and the letter. 
The Lord's Prayer is often repeated merely by rote, and has 
often been used superstitiously as a charm. These slight 
variations are the best proofs that this formal repetition is not 
the use for which it was intended. In order to pray as Jesus 
Christ taught us to pray we must pray with the understanding 
as well as with the spirit — with the spirit and heart as well as 
with the lips. Prayer in its inferior form becomes merely 
mechanical ; but in its most perfect form it requires the exer- 
cise of the reason and understanding. This distinction is the 
salt which saves all prayers and all religions whatever from 
corruption. 

4. There is yet a further lesson to be learned from the gen- 
eral form and substance of the Lord's Prayer. Whence did 
it come ? What, so to speak, was the quarry out of which it 
was hewn ? It might have been entirely fresh and new. It 
might have been brought out for the first time by " Him who 
spake as never man spake." And in a certain sense this was 
bo. As a whole it is entirely new. It is, taking it from 
first to last, what it is truly called, "the Lord's Prayer" — 
the Prayer of our Lord, and of. no one else. But if we take 
each clause and word by itself it has often been observed by 
scholars that they are in part taken from the writings of the 
Jewish Rabbis. It was an exaggeration of Wetstein when he 
said, "Tota hsec oratio ex formulis Hebrseorum concinnata 
est." But certainly in the first two petitions there are strong 
resemblances. " Every scribe," said our Lord, " bringetJh forth 
out of his treasury things new and old." And that is exactly 
what He did Himself in this famous prayer. Something like 
at least to those familiar petitions exists in some hole or corner 
of Jewish liturgies. It was reserved for the Divine Master to 



264 CHRISTIAN INSTITUTIONS. 

draw them forth from darkness into light, and speak out on 
the housetop what was formerly whispered in the scholar's 
closet — to string together in one continuous garland the 
pearls of great price that had been scattered here and there, 
disjointed and divided. We learn from this the value of 
selection, discrimination of study, in the choice of our materi- 
als of knowledge, whether divine or human, and especially of 
our devotion. We are not to think that a saying, or truth, or 
prayer is less divine because it is found outside the Bible. 
We are not to think that anything good in itself is less good 
because it comes fr#m a rabbinical or heathen source. 

5. Observe its brevity. It is indeed a comment upon the 
saying, " God is in heaven, and thou upon earth ; therefore 
let thy words be few." No doubt very often we pray in 
forms much longer than this ; but the shortness of the Lord's 
Prayer is compatible with its being the most excellent of 
all prayers, and with compressing our devotion into the brief- 
est compass. In fact the occasion on which it is introduced 
lays the chief stress on its shortness. It was first taught in 
express contrast to the long repetitions of the heathen relig- 
ions. " They think that they shall be heard for their much 
speaking. Be not ye therefore like unto them, for your 
Father knoweth what things ye have need of before ye ask 
Him. After this manner therefore pray ye." Every one, 
however difficult he may find it to make long prayers, how- 
ever pressing his business may be, morning, noon, and night, 
may have time for this very short prayer. How long does it 
take ? One minute. How many sentences does it contain ? 
Seven. The youngest as well as the oldest — the busiest as 
well as the idlest — the most sceptical as well as the most 
devout — can at least in the day once or twice, if not in the 
early morning or the late evening, use this short prayer. 
There is nothing in it to offend. They who scruple or who 
throw aside the Prayer Book, or the Directory, or the Cate- 
chism, or the Creed, at least may say the Lord's Prayer. They 
cannot be the worse for it. They may be the better. 

6. And now let us look upon the substance of the sentences 
as they follow one another. We have said that a nation's 
religious life may be judged by its chief prayers. For ex- 
ample, the Mohammedan religion may fairly claim to be rep- 



THE LORD'S PMAYER. 265 

resented by the one prayer that every Mussulman offers to God 
morning and evening. It is in the first chapter of the Koran, 
and it is this : — 

44 Praise be to God, Master of the Universe, 
The Merciful, the Compassionate, 
Lord of the day of Judgment. 
To Thee we give our worship, 
From Thee we have our help. 
Guide us in the right way, 

In the way of those whom Thou hast loaded with Thy blessing, 
Not in the way of those who have encountered Thy wrath, or who have 
gone astray." 

Let us not despise that prayer— so humble, so simple, so 
true. Let us rather be thankful that from so many devout 
hearts throughout the Eastern world there ascends so pure an 
offering to the Most High God. Yet surely we may say in no 
proud or Pharisaic spirit that, compared even with this ex- 
alted prayer of the Arabian Prophet, there is a richness, a ful- 
ness, a height of hope, a depth of humility, a breadth of 
meaning in the prayer of the Lord Jesus which we find no- 
where else, which stamps it with a divinity all its own. 

" Our Father which art in Heaven." Our Father, not 
my Father. He is the God not of one man, or one church, or 
one nation, or one race only — but of all who can raise their 
thoughts towards Him. Father. That is the most human, 
most personal, most loving thought which we can frame in 
speaking of the Supreme Being And yet He is in Heaven. 
That is the most remote, the most spiritual, the roost imper- 
sonal thought which we can frame concerning Him. Heaven 
is a word which expresses the ideal, the unseen world, and 
there infinitely raised above us all is the Father whom we 
adore. " Hallowed be Thy name." That is the hope that 
all levity, that all profaneness may be banished from the wor- 
ship of God; not only that our worship may be simple, 
solemn, and reverent, but that our thoughts concerning Him 
may be consecrated and set apart from all the low, debasing, 
superstitious, selfish ends to which His name has so often 
been turned. " O Liberty," it was once said, " how many are 
the crimes that have been committed in thy name !" ; ' 
Religion," so we may also say when we repeat this clause 
of the Lord's Prayer, " how many are the crimes that have 
been committed in thy name !" May that holy name be hal- 
12 



266 CHRISTIAN INSTITUTIONS. 

lowed by the acts and words of those who profess it ! " Thy 
kingdom come." This is the highest hope of humanity ; that 
the rule of supreme truth, and mercy, and justice, and beauty, 
may penetrate every province of thought, and action, and law, 
and art. It has been said there are some places on earth where 
we have to think what is the one single prayer which we should 
utter if we were sure of its being fulfilled. This would, be 
" Thy kingdom come." " Thy will be done." That is the 
expression of our "entire resignation to whatever shall year by 
year, and day by day befall us. Resignation which shall calm 
our passions, and control our murmurs, and curtail our griefs, 
and kindle our cheerfulness. It is, as Bishop Butler Las 
said, the whole of religion. Islam derives its name from it. 
" In earth as it is in heaven." These are words which 
lift our souls up from the world in which we struggle with 
manifold imperfections to the ideal heavenly world, where 
all is perfect. Party strife — crooked ends — ignominious 
flatteries — are they necessary? Let us hope that a time 
may come when they will be unnecessary. " Give us this 
day our daily bread." Here we turn from heaven back to 
earth, and ask for our needful food, our enjoyment, our suste- 
nance from day to day. It is the one petition for our earthly 
wants. We know not what a day may bring forth. Give us 
only, give us at least what we need, of sustenance both for 
body and soul. "Enough is enough" — ask not for more.* 
" Enough for our faith, enough for our maintenance when the 
sun dawns and before the sun sets." "Forgive us our tres- 
passes AS WE FORGIVE THEM THAT TRESPASS AGAINST US." 

"Who is there that has not need to forgive some one — who is 
there that has not the need of something to be forgiven? The 
founder of Georgia said to the founder of Methodism, "I 
never forgive any one." John Wesley answered, " Sir, I trust 
you never sin." " Lead us not into temptation." The 
temptations which beset us. How much of sin comes from 
the outward incidents and companionships round us ! How 
much of innocence from that good Providence which wards 
off the corrupting, defiling, debasing influences that fill the 
earth ! Save us, we may well ask, from the circumstances of 

* See Bishop Lightfoot's treatise on the word ejuovonos. 



THE LORD'S PRAYER. 267 

our age, our country, our church, our profession, our character; 
save us from those circumstances which draw forth our natural 
infirmities — save us from these, break their force. And this is 
best accomplished by the last petition, " Deliver us from 
evil ;" that is, deliver us from the evil,* whatsoever it is, that 
lurks even in the best of good things. From the idleness that 
grows out of youth and fulness of bread — from the party 
spirit that grows out of our political enthusiasm or our nobler 
ambition — from the fanatical narrowness which goes hand in 
hand with our religious earnestness — from the harshness which 
clings to our love of truth — from the indifference which results 
from our wide toleration — from the indecision which intrudes 
itself into our careful discrimination — from the folly of the 
good, and from the selfishness of the wise, Good Lord deliver 
us. " For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the 
glory, for ever and ever, amen." So Christendom has 
added its ratification to the words of Christ. It is the thankful- 
ness which we all feel for the majesty and thought and beauty 
which our heavenly Father has shown to us in the paths of 
nature or in the greatness of man. 

We have thus briefly traversed these petitions. When our 
Lord's disciples came and asked for a form of prayer, not as 
John's disciples had received from their master, itsconclu- 
they thought, no doubt, that He would give them sion - 
something peculiar to themselves — something that no one else 
could use. They little knew what the peculiarity, the singu- 
larity of their Master's Prayer would be — that it was one that 
might be used by every church, by every sect, by every nation, 
by every member of the human family. It is possible that 
some may be inclined to complain of this extreme comprehen- 
siveness and indefiniteness, and to say there is something here 
which falls short of the promise in St. John's Gospel. " If ye 
shall ask anything in My name I will do it." But the answer 
is that here, as before, this prayer is a striking example of the 
greatness of the spirit above the letter. In the letter it does not 
begin or end in the actual name of Jesus Christ. That familiar 
termination which to our ears has become almost the neces- 



* anb tov rrovrjpov, "the evil," not "the Evil One." So it must be translated 
in Matt. v. 37, 39, as well as in Matt. vi. 13. 



268 CHRISTIAN INSTITUTIONS. 

sary ending to every prayer, and which is used in every church, 
whether Unitarian or Tirnitarian, is not here. We do not close 
our Lord's prayer with the words " through Jesus Christ our 
Lord." We do not invoke the holy name of Jesus either at 
the beginning or end. But not the less is it in the fullest 
sense a prayer in the name of Christ. In the name of Christ, 
that is (taking these words in their Biblical sense), "in the 
spirit of Christ," "according to the nature and the will of 
Christ," copying from the lips of Christ, adopted as His one 
formulary of faith at His express commandment. In this true 
meaning of the words the Lord's Prayer is more the Prayer of 
our Lord, is more entirely filled with the name and spirit of 
Christ, than if the name of the Lord Jesus Christ were re- 
peated a hundred times over. In Pope's Universal Prayer 
there is much which is condemned by religious persons, and 
we do not undertake to defend the taste or the sentiment of it 
in every part. But assuredly that which is its chief character- 
istic, its universality, is exactly in spirit that which belongs to 
the prayer of Christ. It is expressed in those well-known 
words : 

" Father of all ! in every age, 
In every clime ador'd, 
By saint, by savage, or by sage, 
Jehovah, Jove, or Lord." 

It is this very characteristic of the prayer which makes it to 
be in His name. It is this very universality which overflows 
with Himself, and which makes the prayer of the philosopher 
to be a paraphrase of His Prayer. He is in every syllable of 
this sacred formula, as He is not equally in any other formula. 
He is in the whole of it, and in all its parts. Of these, the 
most sacred of all the words that He has given us, it is true 
what He said of all His words — they are not mere words, they 
are spirit and they are life. 



COUNCIL AND CREED OF CONSTANTINOPLE. 269 



CHAPTER XVI. 

THE COUNCIL AXD CREED OF CONSTANTINOPLE. 

It may be interesting in connection with the history of the 
early Creeds to add an account of the circumstances under 
which they came into existence. Of the Apostles' Creed we 
have already spoken.* The xslcene Creed was the result of 
the Council of Nicsea, and this, though in a form totally dif- 
ferent from that which now bears the name, is the original 
Creed of the Empire, and its formation has been described in 
the " Lectures on the Eastern Church." \ The Athanasian 
Creed is of much later date, and has also been the subject of a 
separate treatise.^ There remains therefore only the Creed 
commonly called the Creed of Constantinople, which is now 
adopted by the Churches of Rome and England, and the 
Lutheran Churches, and through the whole of the Eastern 
Church, with the exception of the Coptic, Xestorian, and Ar- 
menian branches. In order to do this, it will be necessary to 
describe the Council, with which its composition is traditionally 
connected, the more so as the assembly has never yet been 
adequately portrayed. After this description it will be our 
object to examine into the nature and pretensions of the 
Creed which is usually supposed to have sprung out of it. 

The city of Constantinople had beeng almost ever since 
the Council of Mcsea in the hands of the great party which 
was called by the name of the heresiarch Arius, and which 
embraced all the princes of the Imperial House, from Con- 

* Lecture XTV. t Lectures on the Eastern Church, Lecture IV. 

i The Athanasian Creed, -with a Preface. 

§ The usual authorities -which describe the Council are the ecclesiastical his- 
torians of the following century— Socrates. Sozomen, Theodoret. But far 
more important than these are the letters, orations, and autobiographical 
poems of Gregory Nazianzen, who was not only a contemporary, but an eye- 
witness of most of what he describes. We must add from modern times the 
learned Tillemont, the exact Hef ele. and the elaborate and for the most part 
impartial narrative of the Due de Broglie, all of them belonging to the more 
moderate school of the Roman Church. 



270 CHRISTIAN INSTITUTIONS. 

stantinethe Great to Valens (with the exception of the "apos^ 
tate " Julian), as well as the Gothic tribes on the frontier. But 
the "orthodox" or so called "Catholic" party, to which the 
name of Athanasius still gave life, struggled on; and when 
the rude Spanish soldier Theodosius restored peace to the 
Empire, his known opinions in favor of the orthodox doctrine 
gave a hope of returning strength to the cause which had van- 
quished at Mcsea. Under these circumstances, the little com- 
munity which professed the Athanasian belief at Constantinople 
determined on the step of calling to their assistance one of the 
leaders of those opinions from the adjacent province of Asia 
Minor. Basil would have been the natural choice ; but his age 
and infirmities rendered this impossible. Accordingly, they 
Gregory fixed on Gregory, commonly called " of Nazianzus." 
Nazianzen. Unlike the school in the English Church which, in 
the time of the Nonjurors, and afterwards, sanctions the intru- 
sion of new bishops into places already preoccupied by lawful 
prelates, the orthodox community at Constantinople showed a 
laudable moderation. Gregory was already a bishop, but a 
bishop without a diocese. Appointed to the see of Sasima, 
he had never undertaken its duties, but contented himself 
with helping his aged father in the bishopric of his birthplace 
Nazianzus. Accordingly, he was ready to the hands of the 
minority of the Church of Byzantium, without any direct 
infringement of the rights and titles of Demophilus, the law- 
ful bishop of Constantinople. 

He came from his rustic retreat reluctantly. He was pre- 
maturely old and infirm. His bald head streaked with a few 
white hairs, and his bent figure, were not calculated to com- 
mand attention. He was retiring, susceptible, and, in his 
manners, simple to a fault. It is this contrast with the posi- 
tion which was forced upon him that gives the main interest 
to the curious cycle of events of which he thus became the 
centre. 

Constantinople was crowded with the heads of the different 
ecclesiastical parties, awaiting the arrival of the new Emperor. 
There were the Arian bishops in possession of the Imperial 
sees. There were the semi-Arians, who by very slight con- 
cessions on both sides might be easily included in the orthodox 
community. There were the liberal Catholics, who were eager 



COUNCIL AND CREED OF CONSTANTINOPLE. 271 

to grant such concessions. There were the Puritan Catholics, 
who rigidly spurned all compromise. With these divisions 
there was a vast society, hardly less civilized, less frivolous, 
less complex, than that of our great capitals now, entering into 
those abstract theological questions as keenly as our metro- 
politan circles into the political or ecclesiastical disputes which 
form the materials of conversation at the dinner-tables of Lon- 
don or the saloons of Paris. Everywhere in that new capital 
of the world — at the races of the Hippodrome, at the theatres, 
at feasts, in debauches,* the most sacred names were bandied 
to and fro in eager disputation. Every corner, every alley of 
the city, the streets, the markets, the drapers' shops, the tables 
of moneychangers and of victuallers, were crowded with these 
" off-hand dogmatizers." f If a trader was asked the cost of 
such an article, he answered by philosophizing on generated 
and ungenerated being. If a stranger inquired the price of 
bread, he was told " the Son is subordinate to the Father." If 
a traveller asked whether his bath was ready, he was told " the 
Son arose out of nothing." 

The shyness as well as the piety of Gregory led him to con- 
fine his appearance in public to the pulpit. So completely had 
the orthodox party been depressed, that they had no church to 
offer him for his ministrations. They went back for the 
moment to the custom which, beginning at or before the first 
conversion of the Empire, was in fact the origin of all the 
early Christian churches. Every great Roman house had 
attached to it a hall, which was used by its owner for pur- 
poses of justice or of public assemblies, and bore (at least in 
Rome) the name of " basilica." J Such a hall was employed 
by Gregory on this occasion in the house where he had taken 
up his quarters. An extempore altar was raised, and in 
accordance with the ancient Eastern practice of separating the 
sexes, a gallery was erected for the women, such as on a 
gigantic scale still exists in the Church of St. Sophia ; show- 
ing at once the importance of the female element in these 
Byzantine congregations, and also the prominence given to an 
element in ecclesiastical architecture which is regarded by 

* Gregory Naz. Or. 22-27. 

+ avToo-xeSiot. Soy/aa-no-rac. Gregory Nyssa, De Deitate Filii, vol. ii. p. 898. 

X See Chapter IX. 



272 CHRISTIAN INSTITUTIONS. 

modern ecclesiologists as utterly incongruous. To this extem- 
porized chapel he gave the name of the Anastasia, or Church 
of the Resurrection or Revival ; in* allusion to the resurrec- 
tion, as he hoped, of the orthodox party in the Church, much 
as Nonconformists gave to their places of worship the names, 
not of the ancient saints, but of such events, or symbols, as 
seemed to indicate their solitary position in a corrupt world 
or church — Ebenezer, " the stone of help ;" Bethesda, " the 
house of help." The building was soon crowded ; the crush 
at the entrance was often terrific; the rails of the chancel 
were broken down ; the congregation frequently burst out 
into loud applause. It required a more than mortal not to be 
touched and elated by these signs of the effect produced by 
his oratory. As the aged Wilberforce used, long after his 
retirement from public life, to recall the results of his elo- 
quence in the House of Commons — " Oh ! those cheers, those 
delightful cheers!" so Gregory, years afterwards, used to be 
visited in his solitary dreams by visions of his beloved Anas- 
tasia ; the church brilliantly illuminated ; himself, after the 
manner of the ancient bishops, aloft on his throne at the 
eastern end, the presbyters round him, and the deacons in 
their white robes below; the crowd thronging the church, 
every eye fixed on him ; the congregation sometimes wrapt in 
profound silence, sometimes breaking out into loud shouts of 
approbation. 

But these bright days were destined to have a sad morrow. 
The sermons, which consisted usually of abstract disquisitions 
on the disputed doctrines, but sometimes of counsels towards 
moderation, veiled under a eulogy of the great Athanasius, j- 
provoked the jealousy or hostility of the opposite party, 
or perhaps of the more zealous members of his own. On one 
occasion a body of drunken artisans broke into the church, 
accompanied by an army of beggars, of furious nuns, J and, 



* it furnishes a curious example of the growth of a legend from a name. 
Socrates records the miracle of a woman falling from the gallery without in- 
jury to life, as the origin of the title. As we know the real meaning of the 
name, it is obvious that the reverse is the true account of the matter. A No- 
vatian chapel had borae the same name for the same reason. 

t This is the date of the oration on Athanasius, according to M. de Broglie. 

% M. de Broglie says "des femmes debauchees." But it is clear from Greg- 
ory's account {Or. xxiii. 5, xxxv. 3: Ep. 77; Carm. de Vitd Sua, 660, 670). that 
they were the nuns or consecrated virgins. 



COUNCIL AND CREED OF CONSTANTINOPLE. 273 

the usual accompaniment of riots at that time, ferocious 
monks. A violent conflict ensued — some of the priests and 
neophytes were wounded. The police hesitated to interfere 
— ostensibly on the ground that it was impossible to decide 
which were the assailed and which the assailants. Gregory, 
with a questionable prudence, had surrounded himself with a 
body of orthodox fanatics, with whom he had but little sympa- 
thy, and whose hostility to the moderation of the venerable 
Basil might have well roused his suspicion. They slept in his 
house, they assisted him in preparing his sermons, they formed 
a guard about him in these tumults. One of them was no 
less a person than the youthful Jerome, then on his way from 
the farther East, whose fierce and acrid temper rendered him 
a staunch but perilous friend, and who lost no occasion of 
expressing his admiration of Gregory — his " beloved master," 
" to whom there was no equal in the Western Church." * 
There was another who rendered a yet more dubious assistance. 
Maximus or Heron was one of the class of those wild Egyptians 
who played some years later so disgraceful a part „ . 
in the train of Cyril of Alexandria. He had once 
been a philosopher of the Cynical sect, and, although ordained, 
still wore their curious costume. In all these disturbances his 
figure was conspicuous. He wielded a long staff in his hands. 
A tangled mass of curls — half of their natural black, half 
painted yellow — fell over his shoulders, j- A dirty shirt envel- 
oped his half-naked limbs, which he occasionally drew aside to 
show the scars of wounds which he professed to have received 
in some persecution. At every word of Gregory he uttered 
shouts of delight, at every allusion to the heretics he uttered 
yells of execration. The most sinister rumors, however, were 
circulated against his private character. Even the marks on 
his back were whispered to be the effects of a severe castiga- 
tion with which he had been visited for some discreditable 
transaction. But Gregory was infatuated, as is sometimes the 
case with the most sagacious and the most incorruptible of 
men, by the charms of assiduous flattery, and by the advantage 
of having near him an ally who stopped at nothing in defence 



Many questions passed between them on Biblical criticism and on ecclesi- 
iDe VitTte, 766. F 



astical policy. (Jerome, Contra Rufin, i. 13; De Viris Illustrious, c. 117.) 
" Vit. 754 " 



2?4 CHRISTIAN INSTITUTIONS. 

of a cause which he thought right. Such is the secret of the 
ridiculous eulogy which Gregory pronounced on Maximus in 
his presence, in a sermon which still remains as a monument 
of the weakness into which party spirit can betray even a 
thoughtful and pious man. His dear "Heron was a true 
model of the union of philosophy and religion " * — a " friend 
from an unexpected quarter" — a "dog" — alluding to the title 
of his philosophical sect of the Cynics or " Dogs " — " a dog 
indeed in the best sense : a watch-dog, who guards the house 
from robbers" — finally, it was not too much to say, "his suc- 
cessor in the promised see of Constantinople." Tjbis last hint 
was not thrown away on "the Dog." There was no time to 
be lost. The Emperor was on his way to Constantinople. 
Whoever was the orthodox champion in possession of the see 
would probably be able to keep it. Maximus communicated 
his designs to his Egyptian fellow-countrymen amongst the 
bishops. They, as the orthodox of the orthodox, entered at 
ence into his plan, which received the sanction of Peter, suc- 
cessor of Athanasius in the see of Alexandria. Alexandria at 
that time was, saving the dignity of the new capital of Con- 
stantinople, the chief city of the Eastern world. Its ecclesias- 
tical primacy in the East had hitherto been undisputed. The 
Bishop of Alexandria was at this time the only " Pope " or 
" Father " of the Church. He had long enjoyed the title. It 
is a probable conjecture f that in this stroke of elevating an 
Egyptian of the Egyptians to the see of Constantinople there 
was a deliberate intention at grasping the primacy of the Im- 
perial Church. All was prepared. A large sum of money, 
placed at the disposal of Maximus by a Thasian presbyter who 
had been to the Golden Horn to buy marble, was employed in 
securing the services of a number of Alexandrian sailors. 
Gregory was confined to his house by illness. With this 
mixed multitude to represent the congregation, the Egyptian 
bishops solemnly consecrated Maximus at the dead of night. 
The elevation to this high dignity was rendered still more 

* Gregory Naz. Or. xxv. 1, 2. It is from his companion St. Jerome that we 
are able to substantiate the identity of Maximus with the Heron of this strange 
discourse. "The names were changed," says Jerome, "in order to save the 
credit cf Gregory from having alternately praised and blamed the same man." 
(De Viris Illustribus, c. 117.) 

t Milman's History of Christianity under the Empire, vol. iii. p. 115. 



COUNCIL AND CREED OF CONSTANTINOPLE. 215 

marked by the metamorphosis in his outward appearance. 
"They took 'the dog,'" says Gregory, in whose eyes the 
Cynic now assumed a very different aspect, " and shaved him ; 
the long locks in which his strength resided were shorn off by 
these ecclesiastical Dalilahs." But Maximus had overreached 
himself. This was too startling a contrast. When he ap- 
peared in the morning, cropt, and well-dressed as a bishop, an 
inextinguishable roar of laughter resounded through the city. 
Gregory felt that he was included in the general ridicule. He 
determined on leaving Constantinople. Then a reaction took 
place. The mob veered round. They insisted on forcing 
Gregory at once into the contested see. They dragged him 
in their arms to the episcopal chair. He struggled to escape. 
He stiffened his legs, so as to refuse to sit. The perspiration 
streamed from his face. They pushed and forced him down. 
The women wept, the children screamed. At last he con- 
sented, and then was left to repose. He endeavored to re- 
cover his equanimity by retiring for a time to a villa on the 
shores of the Sea of Marmora, there to wander, as he tells 
us, at sunset — unconscious of the glory which at that hour 
lights up that wonderful prospect with a glow of magical 
splendor, but not insensible to the melancholy sentiment in- 
spired by the rolling waves of the tideless sea along the bays 
of that winding shore. 

There were two other claimants for the vacant see — each 
waiting with the utmost expectation the only hand which 
could seat them securely in their places, the hand of Theodo- 
sius. At Thessalonica the Emperor met Maximus, who, seeing 
that he was coldly received, took refuge at Alexandria, under 
the shelter of the prelate who was at that time the eastern 
oracle of the ecclesiastical world. Theodosius in this difficulty 
appealed to the western oracle at Rome. The Bishop of Rome 
was glad of the opportunity of striking a blow at once at the 
independence and the superior civilization of the East. Da- 
masus, who had a sufficient tincture of letters to write the 
verses that may still be read in the Roman catacombs, fired 
off an answer which by the same blow killed one and wounded 
the other rival. Maximus was to be rejected, not on account 
of his scandalous vices, but because he still wore the garb of a 
philosopher. " No Christian can wear the clothes of a pagan 



276 CHRISTIAN INSTITUTIONS. 

philosopher." And then, with a covert attack on Gregory 
himself, he added, "Philosophy, friend of the world's wisdom, 
is the enemy of faith, the poison of hope, the war against 
charity." The advice thus proffered was followed up by a 
recommendation to the Emperor to summon a General Council 
for the settlement of the disputed succession. 

This accordingly was the origin of the Council of Constanti- 
nople. Theodosius meanwhile took the matter of the See of Con- 
stantinople into his own hands. To the actual Bishop, the Arian 
Demophilus, he proposed the orthodox confession or resigna- 
tion ; Demophilus honorably resisted the temptation. " Since 
you fly from peace," said the Emperor, " I will make you fly from 
your place." So summary was the deposition of a prelate in those 
days, when the breadth, not of a prelate but of an Emperor, 
was sufficient to depose the greatest bishops in Christendom. 
To Gregory he turned with a no less imperious expression of 
his will : " Constantinople demands you, and God makes me 
his instrument to give you this church." The election was 
still nominally in the hands of the people, but the mandate of 
the Emperor was more powerful than any conge delire. It 
was on the 26th of November — one of those dreary days on 
which the winds from the Black Sea envelop the bright city 
of Constantinople with a shroud of clouds dark as night, 
which Gregory's enemies interpreted into a sinister presage of 
his ill-omened elevation. The Emperor rode in state to the 
church where the ceremony was to take place. The immense 
multitude of the Arian population who were to lose their 
bishop, and perhaps themselves to be banished with him — 
old men, women, and children — threw themselves in vain 
before his horse's feet. The Spanish soldier rode on immova- 
ble, as if he were on his way to the field of battle. It was, 
says Gregory himself, the likeness of a city taken by storm. 
By the Emperor's side was the pale, stooping, trembling can- 
didate for the see, hardly knowing where he was till he found 
himself safe within the church, behind the rails of the chancel, 
where he sat side by side with the magnificent Emperor, who 
in his imperial purple was raised there aloft as the chief person 
in the place. It was the "Church of the Apostles," that 
earliest mausoleum of Christian sovereigns, the first germ of 
St. Denys, the Escurial, and Westminster Abbey, where Con- 



COUNCIL AND CREED OF CONSTANTINOPLE. 277 

stantine and his successors lay entombed, and where in after 
days was to rise a yet more splendid edifice, the mosque 
which the Mussulman conqueror Mahomet II. built in like 
manner for himself and his dynasty. There was still a hesita- 
tion, or seeming hesitation, as to which way the popular feel- 
ing would turn. Suddenly, by one of those abrupt tranaitions 
common in Eastern skies, a ray of sunlight burst through the 
wintry clouds, and flashing from sword to sword along the 
ranks of soldiers, and from gem to gem on the rich dresses of 
priest and courtier, finally enveloped the bald white head of 
Gregory himself as with a halo of glory. The omen was at 
once accepted. A shout like thunder rose from the vast con- 
gregation, " Long live our Bishop Gregory ! " In the high 
galleries rang the shrill cries of the women in response. 
With a few faint protestations, Gregory consented to mount 
the Episcopal chair, and the long dispute was terminated. 

Within six weeks after this event took place one of those 
double-sided movements which, without revealing any actual 
duplicity in the actors, disclose the hollowness of Funeral of 
their pretentions and opinions. On the same day Athanaric. 
that a rigid decree condemned and banished the Arians of the 
empire from the walls of every city,* there arrived in Constan- 
tinople the chief of the whole Arian world, Athanaric the 
Goth, seeking shelter in the court of his conqueror from a 
domestic revolution. He was received with as much honor as 
if he had been the most orthodox of mankind, and then a few 
days after his arrival he wasted away and died. His funeral, 
heretic as he was, was conducted with a magnificence which 
excited the wonder and admiration of the Goths even far away 
beyond the Danube. 

Meanwhile the day for the opening of the Council drew on. 
Even Gregory did not consider his elevation secured till he 
he had received its confirmation. The month of May had 
come — the season when the navigation of the Mediterranean 
was open, and when the Bishops could safely embark from 



* Demophilus the Arian bishop, on the promulgation of this edict, very 
naturally quoted the evangelical precept, "If they persecute you in one city, 
flee to another." " Not so," says Socrates, the ecclesiastical historian. " The 
text means that you must leave the city of the world and go to the city of the 
heavenly Jerusalem." 



278 CHRISTIAN INSTITUTIONS. 

their distant dioceses. It was the first General Council that 
had assembled in the Imperial city. When its predecessors 
met at Mcsea, this was because Constantinople was not yet 
founded. But now there was no locality at once so central 
and so august as the great Christian capital. Called as the 
Council was emphatically "by the commandment and will" of 
the Emperor, it could meet nowhere but under the shadow of 
its mem- the Imperial throne. Although less distinguished 
bers. by the character and fame of its members than that 

earlier synod, and although still more exclusively confined to 
the Eastern Church, it was not without some brilliant orna- 
ments. There were the friends of Basil, well versed in his 
moderate counsels. Chief amongst them was his brother 
Gregory of Nyssa, reckoned by the 5th and 7th General 
Councils amongst the highest authorities of the Church.* He 
had lately returned from his journey to Syria, on a mission of 
peace-making — filled with indignation against the follies and 
scandals of the pilgrimages. He brought with him his elab- 
orate work against the recent heretics, which in spare mo- 
ments he read aloud to his friend, the new Bishop of Constan- 
tinople, and to their joint admirer the youthful Jerome.f 
There was Cyril of Jerusalem, now in his advancing years, 
with whom Gregory had there become acquainted, and who 
himself had originally belonged to the semi-Arian section of 
the Church. There was Melitius, the just and gentle Bishop 
of Antioch, so much revered in his own city that his portrait 
was found everywhere, on rings, on goblets, in the saloons of 
palaces, in the private chambers of great ladies. It might be 
conjectured that one of these likenesses had wandered far 
West, from an incident which ocpurred on the first visit of 
the Bishops to the Emperor. The reception which he gave 
to Melitius was of the most flattering kind ; he flew up to 
him, singled him from the rest, pressed him to his bosom, and 
kissed his eyes, lips, breast, head, and hand. He had, he 
said, in a vision on the eve of his election to the empire, seen 
a venerable person approach who wrapped him in his imper- 
ial mantle, and placed the diadem on his head. This person- 
age he now recognized in the Bishop of Antioch. Such a 

* Tillemont, ix. 601. t Jerome, De Vir. III. c. 128. 



COUNCIL AND CBEED OF CONSTANTINOPLE. 279 

welcome of itself designated Melitius to be President of the 
Council. In fact, in the absence of the Bishops of Rome and 
Alexandria, the Bishop of Antioch occupied the chief place. 
And the mellifluous character of Melitius (to use the pun of 
Gregory) well adapted him for the office. 

The first work which the Council had to undertake was the 
decision of the contest for the see of Constantinople. The 
absence of Maximus, and of the Egyptian bishops, who were 
detained at Alexandria around the deathbed of their chief, 
rendered Gregory's triumph easy. But it is characteristic of 
his moderation, and of that of Melitius, that when there was 
a proposal of proceeding against the bishops who had taken 
part in the nomination of Maximus, it was abandoned on the 
grounds — too often lost sight of in the heat of controversy — 
that, as they were detained in Alexandria, it would be unjust 
to condemn them in their absence without hearing their de- 
fence. 

This auspicious beginning of a generosity unusual on such 
occasions was suddenly cut short by the death of Melitius. 
The grief felt on the event was testified by the Death of 
magnificence of his obsequies. The body was Melitius. 
wrapped in a silken shroud, worked by one of the noble 
ladies of Constantinople. It was carried in procession to the 
imperial mausoleum in the Church of the Apostles; all the 
bishops assisted, with their clergy, singing psalms in the dif- 
ferent dialects — probably the Greek dialects — of Asia Minor 
and Syria. Funeral orations were pronounced, amongst oth- 
ers, by Gregory of Nyssa. The sacred remains were then 
sent home to Antioch ; and it marks the difference between 
ancient and modern usage, that an express order from the 
Emperor was required to enable the funeral procession, as a 
special favor, even to enter the walls of the various cities 
through which it passed. 

The first question to be discussed by the Council, thus 
deprived of its head, and placed, as a matter of course, under 
the presidency of Gregory Nazianzen, now the rec ognized 
bishop of the Imperial city, was occasioned by the very 
calamity which they were now deploring. Ostensibly called 
together to decide certain grave theological questions then 
pending, their main interest was centred, as usually happens 



280 CHRISTIAN INSTITUTIONS. 

in popular assemblies, whether secular or ecclesiastical, on a 
question purely personal. 

The Church of Antioch had been lately divided by two 
contending factions. Melitius, who had thus been carried to 
Contentions his grave with all the honors of a saint, was the law- 
at Antioch. f u ^ ku^ m the eyes of an extreme party at Antioch, 
not the orthodox, bishop of that see. He had in his youth, it 
was said, been infected by the subtle errors of Arius.; and, in 
his later years, he had joined Basil in the noble attempts of 
that distinguished divine to moderate the rage of controversy, 
and to accept, without further test or questioning, all who were 
willing to adopt the creed of Nicsea, which down to that time 
had expressed no precise definition of the complicated opin- 
ions that were now arising on the nature of the Third Hypos- 
tasis of the Trinity.* This moderation was a grave offence 
in the judgment of the partisans of extreme orthodoxy. They 
refused to communicate with Melitius ; and they received from 
Sardinia, from the hands of the stern fanatic Lucifer of 
Cagliari, a bishop of the name of Paulinus, who became the 
head of a dissenting community within the Church of Antioch, 
priding itself on its superior orthodoxy, and refusing to ac- 
knowledge the legitimate bishop, and maintained chiefly in its 
position not by any support from the national churches of the 
East, but from the more eager \ zealots of the Western Em- 
pire, who fanned the flames of discord. " This ridiculous and 
causeless schism " \ had engaged the attention of Melitius be- 
fore he left his diocese. The case had been referred.to the 
imperial councillors, who had decided in Melitius's favor ; and 
he then proposed to Paulinus, as a middle course, that the 
government of the Church should remain in statu quo till the 
death of either, in which case the other should succeed to the 
vacant see. To this, after some hesitation, Paulinus acceded ; 
and all the chief clergy at Antioch swore to observe the com- 
pact. 

On the death of Melitius, the very case provided for had 
occurred : and Gregory immediately proposed to the Council 
that the convention should be carried out. He appealed to 



* Gregory, Or. xliii. 19. t De Broglie, vol. i. pp. 121-123. 

% Ibid. p. 424. 



COUNCIL AND CREED OF CONSTANTINOPLE. 281 

the oaths by which it was supported ; he reminded them that 
" if two angels were candidates for the disputed see, the quar- 
rel was not worth the scandal it occasioned." With a dis- 
interestedness the more remarkable because he had been fiercely 
attacked by Paulinus for his moderate counsels in former 
times, he entreated them to abide by the agreement, and 
hinted at the danger of rousing the passions of the western 
bishops, who were in favor of their nominee Paulinus. Never 
did Gregory plead with more eloquence or in behalf of a juster 
cause. But he pleaded in vain. Even before Mel itius's death, 
the contending factions in this Antiochene quarrel had flown 
at each other's throats, canvassing right and left every one 
that came across them, with cheers and counter-cheers.* The 
question had passed from the region of justice and of faith 
into a mere party struggle. Now that the time for a pacific 
settlement had arrived, the Melitians would not hear of sub- 
mitting to the odious Paulinus. Nor could they be conciliated 
by the appeal of Gregory. His influence had been shaken by 
his weakness in the affair of Maximus ; and, besides, his allusion 
to the fear of the West roused all the slumbering passions of 
the jealous East. He has himself described the effect of his 
speech : " A yell, rather than a cry, broke from the assembled 
episcopate." " They threw dust in his face ; they buzzed 
about him like a swarm of wasps ; they cawed against him like 
an army of crows." The young were most ardent, but they 
were hounded on by the old. An argument against the West, 
which seemed to the youthful partisans of the East irresistible, 
was that Christianity must follow the course of the sun, not 
from west to east, but from east to west ; and the Eastern 
bishops supported this view, " showing their tusks," says Greg- 
ory, " as if they had been wild boars." f From the midst of 
this tumult, he appealed to Modarius, an Imperial officer, a 
Goth, to allay the ecclesiastical clamor. J He pointed out to 
him that these episcopal gatherings, so far from putting an end 
to the evil, merely added confusion to confusion. It would 
seem that this appeal was in also vain. Theodosius, whether 
from scruple or policy, was determined to leave the bishops to 
themselves. The precedent set by Constantine at Nicaea had 

* Gregory, De Vit. 1555. t De Vit. 1805. % Ep. 136. 



282 CHRISTIAN INSTITUTIONS. 

passed into a law. That sagacious ruler, when he received the 
mutual complaints and accusations of the bishops of the First 
General Council against each other, put them all into the fire 
without reading them ; and in accordance with this contempt- 
uous but charitable act, an imperial decree was passed on the 
occasion of the Second Council,* prohibiting bishops to appear 
against each other in courts of law. Theodosius, however, 
though unwilling to interfere directly, determined to exercise 
an indirect influence on the largest scale. He summoned from 
across the border the only western bishops who were available 
— those of Macedonia, which, according to the division then 
established, belonged to the Western Empire. Their appear- 
ance might have turned the scale in behalf of Gregory's 
counsels, but at the same moment that they entered Constanti- 
nople, there arrived in the Golden Horn an equal accession to 
the opposite faction from Egypt. The Egyptian bishops were 
with their new " Pope," and boiling over with indignation 
against Gregory for his rejection of their old favorite Maxi- 
mus. The Macedonian bishops also proved more unmanage- 
able than Theodosius had anticipated. They brought with 
them, as Gregory expresses it, the " rough breath of the North- 
Wester. " Their uncompromising austerity, and the subtle con- 
troversial spirit of the eastern prelates, found a common ground 
in attacking the unfortunate Gregory. There was one joint in 
his ecclesiastical harness which presented an opening for the 
darts of the rigid precisians of the time. The Council of 
Deprivation Nicaeahad peremptorily forbidden, on pain of depri- 
of Gregory. V ation from orders, any translation — not only from 
see to see, but from parish to parish.f From that hour to 
this, in every church of Christendom, human ambition and 
obvious convenience have been too strong for the decree even 
of so venerable a body as the First (Ecumenical Council. 
But, general as the violation of the decree was, it was only 
when personal interests could be served by reviving it that 
attention was called to the practice. Gregory had been Bishop 
of Sasima before he was elevated to the see of Constantinople. 
This was enough ; and although the fact had been perfectly 

* Cod. Theod. xi. t. xxxix, 1. 9. As explained, with every appearance of 
reason, by M. de Broglie (vol. i. p. 434), after Godefroi. 
f Gee Chapter IX. 



COUNCIL AND CREED OF CONSTANTINOPLE. 283 

known at the time when his election to the see was confirmed 
by this very Council ; although there was no reason for pro- 
ceeding against him, rather than against any of the many 
bishops and presbyters who had equally broken the decree of 
Mcaea ; although there was no occasion for reviving the ques- 
tion in his case at this particular moment ; yet the leading 
members of the Council had the meanness to condemn in him 
what they forgave in those with whom they had no quarrel ; 
to take advantage of his temporary unpopularity to press 
against him a measure which justice would have required to be 
pressed against numberless others. To Gregory personally the 
retirement from his bishopric was no great sacrifice. The epis- 
copate had always been a burden to him ; he " neighed like an 
imprisoned horse for his green pastures * of study and leisure." 
He determined at once to "make himself the Jonah of the 
tempest." Yet when it came to the point, even he could not 
believe that the Council would have the base ingratitude to 
accept a resignation so nobly and promptly offered. But gen- 
erosity towards a fallen foe is a difficult virtue. A few, in dis- 
gust at their associates, followed Gregory as he left the Coun- 
cil. The rest remained, and rejoiced in the departure of an 
honest and therefore a troublesome chief. " I have not time 
or disposition," says Gregory, " to unravel their intrigues, so I 
will be silent." He then visited the Emperor, hoping, perhaps 
in spite of himself, to obtain a reversal of his own sentence. 
But Theodosius, though far more deeply affected than the 
Synod, adhered to the resolution of leaving the bishops to set- 
tle their own affairs; and after apathetic and eloquent farewell, 
delivered in the Church of the Apostles; after a glowing 
description — true even after the vicissitudes of thirteen hundred 
years — of the- great opportunities of Constantinople, " the eye 
of the world, the knot which links together East and West; 
the centre in which all extremes combine," — Gregory quitted 
that glorious city forever, and hastened to bury his old age and 
his cares in the solitude of his ancestral home at Nazianzus. He 
might, perhaps, have acted a more dignified part had he buried 
in oblivion all remembrance of the causes of his retirement. 
But history has ratified the truth of the invectives which his 

* De Vit. 1860-70. 



284 CHMISTIAJSt INSTITUTIONS. 

vanity or his righteous indignation extorted from him. The 
pent-up flow of his emotion, as he says, could not be restrained,* 
and the result is an elaborate picture of the bishops of that time, 
doubtless of those whom he had known at the Council, and 
who had cast him out from their ranks as " an evil and unholy 
man." This extraordinary description would be justly consid- 
ered a libel on any modern ecclesiastical assembly, and is thus 
instructive, as showing the impression produced on a contem- 
porary and a canonized saint by an institution and an age to 
which later times have looked back with such unquestioning 
reverence.f " They are actors on a gigantic scale." " They 
walk on stilts." " They grin through borrowed masks." They 
seem to him as though they had come in answer to the sum- 
mons of a herald who had convoked to the Council all the 
gluttons, villains, liars, false-swearers of the Empire. They are 
" chameleons that change their color with every stone over which 
they pass." They are "illiterate, low-born, filled with all the 
pride of upstarts fresh from the tables of false accountants," 
" peasants from the plough," or from the spade, " unwashed 
blacksmiths," " deserters from the army and navy, still stinking 
from the holds of the ships," or with the brand of the whip or 
the iron on their bodies. The refined Gregory was doubtless 
acutely sensitive to the coarseness of vulgarity and " the igno- 
rance which never knows when to be silent." But he is aware 
of the objection that the Apostles might be said also to have 
been unlearned men. " Yes," he replies, as if anticipating the 
argument of the apostolical or papal succession, " but it must be 
a real Apostle ; give me one such, and I will reverence him 
however illiterate." J " But these," he returns to the charge, 
" are time-servers, waiting not on God but on the rise and flow 
of the tides, or the straw in the wind " — " angry lions to the 
small, fawning spaniels to the great" — " flatterers of ladies" — 
" snuffing up the smell of good dinners " — " ever at the gates 
not of the wise but of the powerful "§ — " unable to speak 

* Ad Episc. (vol. ii. pp. 824 829). 

t M. de Broglie has evaded some of these dark colors by transferring them 
to the Arian bishops ; much in the same way as the mutual recriminations of 
the Bishops of Nicaea have been disposed of by wrongly referring them to the 
heretics. But there can be no question that Gregory is speaking of those who 
dismissed him from his office (see De Episc. 150, Ad Episc. 110), and therefore 
of the Council collectively. 

$ Ad Episc. pp. 200-230. § De Episc pp. 330-350, 635. 



COUNCIL AND CREED OF CONSTANTINOPLE. 285 

themselves, but having sufficient sense to stop the tongues of 
those who can " — " made worse by their elevation " — " affect- 
ing manners not their own" — "the long beard, the downcast 
look, the head bowed, the subdued voice " — " the slow walk" 
— " the got-up devotee " * — " the wisdom anywhere but in 
mind." 

If such is a faithful character of the prelates at the Council, 
it needed not any special provocation to justify the well-known 
protests of Gregory, which, in fact, are even tame and flat after 
these sustained invectives. " Councils, congresses, we greet 
afar off, from which (to use very moderate terms) we have 
suffered many evils.'' " I will not sit in one of those Councils 
of geese and cranes." ' *' I fly from every meeting of bishops, 
for I never saw a good end of any such,f nor a termination, 
but rather an addition, of evils." 

The Council was thus left without a head, and Constantino- 
ple without a bishop. Accordingly one of the chief objects 
for which the Synod had been called together was by its own 
folly frustrated. Whilst the Council hesitated, others took the 
matter into their own hands. The solution was one which for- 
cibly illustrates the ecclesiastical usages of those times, as unlike 
to those of our time as it is possible to conceive. 

There was a magistrate at Constantinople named Nectarius, 
remarkable for his dignified manners. He was a native of Tar- 
sus, and, being on the point of returning home, called Election of 
on his countryman Diodorus, Bishop of Tarsus, then Nectarius. 
at the Council, to ask whether he could take any letters for him. 
Diodorus, perhaps not without the partiality of a fellow-citizen, 
was so much struck by his venerable white locks and his splen- 
did priestly appearance, that he determined, if possible, to have 
him raised to the vacaut bishopric. He accordingly communi- 
cated his name to the Bishop of Antioch, who at first laughed 
at the notion as preposterous, but at last consented, partly as a 
favor, partly in jest, to add his name at the end of the list to 
be submitted to the Emperor.J 

Meantime, the claims of Nectarius appear to have been 
whispered about in the groups of loiterers who may always be 
seen in an Eastern city, and thus to have reached the Court. 

* IltOTbs eo-Kevao-ju.evo5, Ibid. 150. 

t Ibid. vol. ii. pp. 106, 110; De Vit. 855. X Sozomen, vii. c. 8. 



286 CHRISTIAN INSTITUTIONS. 

The Emperor, the moment he saw the list, put his finger on 
Nectarius's name, ran over the other candidates, then came back 
to Nectarius, and declared him bishop, to the general amaze- 
ment of the Council, who, nevertheless, at once acquiesced in 
the decision. 

Not only, however, was Nectarius a layman and a magistrate, 
but he was unbaptized, and not only unbaptized, but he had 
purposely delayed his baptism, according to the bad practice 
of that age, in order to reserve for the last moment the can- 
celling of the sins of a somewhat frivolous youth and man- 
hood. But this discovery was made too late, and the Emperor 
adhered to his decision with an obstinacy so surprising that 
it was afterwards supposed by Nectarius's admirers that he 
must have had a special inspiration. In the opinion of some 
this strange episcopate turned out extremely well. But this is 
not the natural inference from the facts that we know concern- 
ing it.* It beginning certainly was not creditable. Nectarius 
learned his episcopal duties as fast as he could from one of his 
Cilician friends, Cyriacus, Bishop of Adana, whom, by the ad- 
vice of Diodorus, he retained with him for some time.f He 
also surrounded himself with a circle of his own countrymen, 
and amongst others was anxious to ordain as his chaplain and 
deacon, Martyrius, a physician, who had been formerly one of 
his boon companions, but who now declined Nectarius's pro- 
posal on the characteristic ground, that he, having been bap- 
tized long before, had lost the chance of clearing himself which 
Nectarius, by his postponement of the sacred rite, had so pru- 
dently reserved. 

Such was the new head of the Council and of the clergy of 
Constantinople to be introduced into his office by an accumu- 
lation, in the course of a few days, of the ceremonies of bap- 
tism, ordination, and consecration, each of which at that time 
implied weeks if not years of preparation. The scandal of 
Nectarius's elevation caused so much talk as to revive once 
more the hopes of Maximus the Dog, who seduced no less a 
person than Ambrose J and the other bishops of the West to 

* The bad character of Nectarius's episcopate is fairly brought out by Tille- 
mont, vol. ix. p. 488. 

t Sozomen, vii. 9. 

X Tillemont, vol. ix. pp. 501, 502. It was on this occasion that Maximus came 
out with an orthodox book in order to procure the favor of the Emperor. 



COUNCIL AND CREED OF CONSTANTINOPLE. 287 

take up his cause. But Nectarius held his own, supported, as 
he was, by Emperor and Council, and also by a kindly note 
from his deposed rival, " cast away by the ungrateful city like 
a flake of foam or a fragment of sea-weed " on the Bosphorus. 

Meanwhile, under these auspices, the Council hastened to 
wind up its affairs, and to approach the decision of the theo- 
logical questions for which the Bishops had mainly been sum- 
moned. By this time they were so thoroughly demoralized 
and discredited by their internal quarrels, that the thirty-six he- 
retical prelates who were present took courage to offer a deter- 
mined front, and, to the surprise alike of Emperor and Coun- 
cil, fixed a day for their departure, and left Constantinople, 
protesting against any further attempts on the part of the as- 
sembly. But the majority which remained, however reduced in 
numbers and authority by this secession, were relieved to feel 
themselves at liberty to conclude their task without any further 
discussion. 

From the most authentic accounts it would appear that they 
confined themselves to issuing a series of decrees or canons. 
Of these the first strongly condemned in a mass the 
various heresies of the time. The second, third, Constanti- 
and fourth endeavored to determine the jurisdic- n °P le - 
tions and precedencies of the different Bishops of the Empire, 
annulling the election of Maxim us, and giving to the see of 
Constantinople a rank second only to that of Rome, on the 
express ground that Constantinople was a second Rome. This 
order is important as embodying the fact that the several dig- 
nitaries of Christendom took their positions not according to 
the sacred or apostolic recollections of their sees, but accord- 
ing to the civil rank of the cities where they resided. The 
exaltation of Constantinople was assuredly owing not to any 
apostolic dignity, but to its being the capital of Constantine, 
and the bishop of old Rome, in like manner, assuredly occu- 
pied the first place, not because he was the successor of Peter, 
but the bishop of the capital of the world.* 

It was f the 9th of July, and the summer heats impended, 

* The 4th, 5th, 6th, and 7th Canons commonly ascribed to this Council are 
shown by Hefele (Concilien-Geschichte, ii. pp. 13, 14, 18-27) to be of a later 
date. See also Professor Hort's Dissertations*^. 95-100. 

t Hefele. {Concilien-Geschichte, ii. p. 12.) 



288 CHRISTIAN INSTITUTIONS. 

which, though tolerable at Constantinople, would render the 
return of the bishops to their several homes increasingly 
difficult. Theodosius, now that their work was over, 
felt that his was to begin, broke silence, and affirmed 
by an imperial decree the condemnation of the here- 
sies which they had issued, and the rank of the bishops 
which they had established. Their proceedings were 
closed by a splendid funeral ceremony, in which the remains 
of Paul, the first bishop of the imperial city, were transferred 
in state from Ancyra to a church * in Constantinople built for 
his rival and successor Macedonius. Paul had been present 
at the Council of Nicaea as a child of twelve years old, in at- 
tendance on Alexander, Bishop of Byzantium, and this inci- 
dent of his posthumous honors thus seems to link together the 
two first assemblies of the Christian Church. 

It has been thought necessary to give this description of a 
Council, because it illustrates so many feelings of the time. 
The Creed ^ e now come *° tne question of what is commonly 
of Constan- called the creed of Constantinople. In the common 
tmop e. traditions f of ecclesiastical history, the third part 
of the Nicene Creed is said to have been added by the Fathers 
of the Council of Constantinople to resist a new heresy con- 
cerning the Third Hypostasis in the Trinity, and the Nicene 
Creed thus enlarged is designated as " the Creed of Constanti- 
nople." But this designation, though not quite as erroneous as 
that which speaks of the " Apostles' Creed," and of Athana- 
sius's Creed, or which describes this altered confession as " the 
Nicene Creed," is very nearly as destitute of foundation. 
There is no trace in the records of the Council of any such for- 
mal enunciation of any new Creed ; on the contrary, they ap- 
peal to the existing Nicene Creed as adequate for all theological 
purposes. Such too is the language of Gregory Nazianzen a 
few years after the meeting of the Council. J 

* The fame of the funeral was so great that a belief sprang up among the 
people, and especially among the ladies of Constantinople, that St. Paxil tho 
Apostle was buried in the church. (Sozomen, vii. c. 9.) It is a good instance 
of the growth of a legend from the confusion of an obscure with a celebrated 
name. Many such doubtless have arisen. 

t "Added by the Fathers of the first Council of Constantinople." (Cate- 
chism of the Council of Trent, Article VIII.) Long after the Council a chapel 
was shown in Constantinople, under the name of Concord," where the creed 
was said to have been drawn up. (Tillemont, ix. p. 495, where the whole mat- 
ter is well discussed.) 

X See Hefele. (Concilien-Geschichte, ii. p. 11.) 



COUNCIL AND CREED OF CONSTANTINOPLE. 289 

Then follows the period of eighty years, which are filled bv 
the two Councils of Ephesus and that of Chalcedon. Tliey are 
told in great detail by Fleury, Tillemont, Milinan, and Amedee 
Thierry. They are described with such liveliness in the con- 
temporary historians and acts as to leave little to be desired. 
The short-hand writers report to us not only every speech, but 
every cry of approval or disapproval, and everj' movement bv 
which the assembly was swayed to and fro. At times their 
reports were taken with difficulty, the violence of the chief 
actors being such that their notes were effaced as soon as writ- 
ten, and that their fingers were broken in the attempt to pre- 
vent them from writing. But they remain a wonderful, per- 
haps a unique, monument of the point to which stenography 
had reached in the fourth century. 

The dispute which occasioned the Council of Ephesus was 
the refusal of Nestorius,* Archbishop of Constantinople, to 
describe the Virgin Mary by a Greek expression to which the 
Western languages furnish no exact equivalent. It suffices to 
state that in no Protestant Church could the expression be 
used without grave offence. Never was there a time when 
Pascal's humorous description of theological terms was more 
applicable: " The difference between us is so subtle that we 
can hardly perceive it ourselves; anyone else would find it 
difficult to understand. Happy," he exclaims in righteous 
indignation, " are the nations who never heard of the word. 
Happy are they who preceded its birth." f Had Nestorius been 
Cyril, or Cyril Nestorius, the two parties would have changed 
accordingly. J The expression over which the battle was fought 
was never admitted into any creed of the Church. Neither at 
Ephesus or Chalcedon was there on this ground any addition 
to what already existed. 

We must not suppose that the Councils acted from spon- 
taneous conviction. A determined mob from Constantinople 

*.I have given the titles of the Roman, Constantinopolitan, and Alexandrian 
sees as they were at the time. " Pope " and " Patriarch " were later. 

t Provincial Letters I. and III. For an instructive discussion of the intri- 
cacies, contradictions, and obscurities of the theological terms used in these 
controversies, see Cardinal Newman's History of the Arians, Appendix, 432- 
444. 

X How the same expressions become orthodox and heterodox in turn is seen 
from the Homoousion (see Lectures on Eastern Church, Lecture IV. p. 137), 
and from the adoption by Nestorius and the denial by Cyril of words officially 
incorporated with the Creed: "Incarnate of the Holy Ghost and of the "Virgin 
Mary." ^Professor Hort's Dissertations, 112.) 

13 



290 CHRISTIAN INSTITUTIONS. 

— from Syria — from Egypt — pressed upon them from with- 
out. It was like the tyranny which the Clnhs exercised over 
the Convention in the time of the French Revolution. The 
monks were for the most part laymen, but laymen charged 
with all the passions of clergy. The religious orders of the 
West have never been used for such purposes, nor, it must be 
added, subjected to such treatment. We are told at the begin- 
ning of the conflict that Nestorius himself was the aggressor. 
The monks, who were the first to catch any scent of heresy, 
were in the first instance stripped and lashed with loaded 
whips — laid on the ground and beat as they lay. But these 
passions and penalties were not confined to one party. Cyril 
brought with him from Alexandria the savage guard of his 
palace, the Parabolani, or " Death-defiers," whose original 
function was to bury the dead, but whose duty it now became 
to protect the Archbishop against all enemies; the sailors, 
whose rough life laid them open to any one who hired them ; 
the sturdy porters and beggars, and the bathing-men from the 
public baths. These men sat at the doors of the Council, 
and the streets ran red with the blood which they shed with- 
out scruple. 

Barsumas, the fierce monk with his band of anchorites as 
fierce as himself, came thither with his reputation ready made 
for knocking heretics on the head with the huge maces which 
he and his companions wielded with terrible force on any one 
who opposed them. The whole was crowned at the critical 
moment by the entrance of a body of soldiers with drawn 
swords and charged lances, or with chains to carry off the refrac- 
tory members to prison. Some hid themselves under the 
benches ; some were compelled to sign the decrees in blank. 
Flavian, Archbishop of Constantinople, lay watching for the 
moment of escape, when Dioscorus, the Archbishop of Alex- 
andria, perceiving him, struck him in the face with his fist; 
the two deacons, one of them afterwards himself Archbishop 
of Alexandria, seized him round the waist and dashed him to 
the ground. Dioscorus kicked the dying man on the sides and 
chest. The monks of Barsumas struck him with their clubs 
as he lay on the ground. Barsumas himself cried out in the 
Syrian language, " Kill him, kill him." He expired from 
this savage treatment in the course of a few days. 



COUNCIL AND CREED OF CONSTANTINOPLE. 291 

Such were the scenes of disorder, reaching their height in the 
Council, afterwards called the Robber Council at Ephesus,* 
but of which the indications spread through the whole period. 
Dioscorus's violence differed from that of Cyril in degree only, 
not in kind. The same crowd of ruffians were in all these 
assemblies, and the fate which threatened the hesitating bish- 
ops was similar. 

Another influence, more gentle and more orderly but 
equally potent, was that of the Imperial Court. Theodosius 
II. and his wife Eudocia — Marcian, the honest soldier, and his 
wife Pulcheria — were never absent from the thoughts of the 
leaders of the assemblies. To persuade, cajole, circumvent the 
Imperial emissaries was the incessant effort of either side. It 
was not by accident that the decision of each of these assem- 
blies coincided with the opinions of the high personages then 
reigning in the court. The wavering mind of Theodosius II. 
was the point to be won at the Council of Ephesus. Chrysa- 
phius, the great courtier, was the chief supporter of the Robber 
Council. Marcian and Pulcheria received the tumultuous 
acclamations of the Council of Chalcedon. " To Marcian the 
new Constantine — to Pulcheria the new Helena." The per- 
sonal motives of each of these high personages entered deeply 
into the controversy. Theodosius was the enemy of any one 
who brought him any trouble. Chrysaphius was the enemy of 
Archbishop Flavian, who had refused him the accustomed 
fees at Easter. Pulcheria was influenced by jealousy of her 
sister-in-law Eudocia and her hatred of Chrysaphius. The 
letters of the Emperors were reckoned as "sacred." The 
Councils were convoked entirely at their summons. 

' Another baser element in these considerations was the gross 
bribery practised by Cyril. Together with this acted the 
influences, not unusual in such controversies — the deser- 
tion of the unpopular cause by half-hearted friends; Nes- 
torius abandoned by those who had looked up to him as 
their oracle — Dioscorus left alone in the Council of Chalcedon 
by those who had followed him through all his violences in the 
Robber Council. There was also that which always produces 



* The decrees of the Council were directed to be revised at Chalcedon, but 
the Imperial Government declined to condemn the Council itself. 



292 CHRISTIAN INSTITUTIONS. 

an effect on a mixed assembly — the horror expressed by weak- 
minded disciples, who profess to be and are really shocked 
by some rash expression on the part of their master, and 
speaking with bated breath and tears in their eves — Acacius 
of Mitylene and Theodotus of Ancyra ; or again some argu- 
mentative dialectician who wishes to push all arguments to their 
extremities, such as Eusebius of Dorylseum, the old advocate 
who never would leave the simple Eutyches to himself. 

There were also the rivalries of the great sees ; Alexandria, 
twice over, in the person of Cyril and in the person of Di- 
Personal oscorus, irritated by the preponderance of Con- 
influences, stantinople and of Antioch — Rome, at the Robber 
Council, irritated in the person of its legates, who vainly en- 
deavored to get a hearing for their master's letter. There 
was the opening for every kind of private rancor — discon- 
tented deacons, ambitious priests denouncing their bishops 
when the occasion offered, before the commissioners sent 
down by the Imperial Government. There was the pardonable 
weakness of the bishops, afraid of their constituencies, afraid 
of their congregations, afraid of their clergy. There were aged 
prelates prostrate on the floor, with their faces on the ground, 
crying, " Have mercy upon us ; have pity upon us." " They 
will kill us at home." " Have pity on our gray hairs." There 
were also the bishops of Asia, alarmed for their popularity if 
they sacrificed the privileges of the see of Ephesus. " Have 
pity upon us; they will murder our children; have pity on our 
children ; have pity on us." It is a scene which reminds us 
of the most pitiable scenes in the elections of some of our 
modern representative assemblies. 

A curious circumstance must be noticed as confirming the 
decisions of both assemblies. The claim of Ephesus was sug- 
Locai in- gested on the ground of its accessibility by land and 
fluences. sea? an( j its ample supply of provisions in the wide 
plain of the Cayster. But there was a further cause not men- 
tioned, not perhaps occurring to those who summoned the 
Council, but which materially contributed to its final result. 
Ephesus was the burial-place, according to tradition, of the 
Virgin Mother, who with John the Evangelist had taken 
refuge there in the close of the first century. The church in 
which the assembly was to be held was the only one in the 



COUNCIL AND CREED OF CONSTANTINOPLE. 298 

world as yet dedicated to the Virgin Mary. In the mind of 
the Ephesian populace she had taken the place of the sacred 
image of Diana which had so excited them four centuries 
earlier. The passions of the people, as described in the nine- 
teenth chapter of the Acts, might seem to have been recalled 
in some of the scenes of the Council. All these circumstances 
contributed to the succes of the anti-Nestorian cause, and, 
although the honor of the Virgin was not the primary cause 
of the agitation of the question, the triumph of Cyril's party 
in Ephesus was celebrated as such. 

The reasons for the selection of Chalcedon was still more 
remarkable, It was the nearest approach to Constantinople 
without being in the city itself. Chalcedon was Scutari. It 
was that splendid promontory dear to Englishmen, dear to all 
who have ever from its height contemplated that glorious 
view. Even in that age the beauty of the situation attracted 
the admiration of spectators. But it was yet more than this. 
The church in which the Council was to be held was that 
which contained the remains* of the virgin martyr St. 
Euphemia. She was the oracle, the miracle- worker, of the 
neighborhood. The Archbishop of Constantinople on great 
emergencies entered the shrine, and (like the Bishop of 
Petra on like occasions with the sacred fire at Jerusalem) 
inserted a sponge into the tomb, which he drew out filled 
with the martyr's blood, wHch was then distributed, as a cure 
for all evils, to all parts of tM empire. It was in this same 
tomb that at the close or the Council the magistrates and 
bishops placed the disputed documents which contained the 
faith of the assenoh T ; and tradition added that the dead 
woman raised in her hand the roll wHch contained the true 
doctrine,)- and that the roll which contained the heretical 
doctrine lay dishonored at her feet. 

The whole proceedings of the Council of Ephesus have been 
summarized by an eminent personage J who knew what he was 
saying, and said what he meant. 

"Even those Councils which were oecumenical have nothing 



* They were afterwards transferred to Saint Sophia, and subsequently to 
the Abbey of Saint Euphemia in Calabria. 
1 1 have seen pictures at Athos representing this tradition. 
% Cardinal Newman's Historical Sketches, pp. 335-337, 350, 351. 



294 CHRISTIAN INSTITUTIONS. 

to boast of in regard to the Fathers, taken individually, which 
compose them. They appear as the antagonist host in a battle, 

not as the shepherds of their people 

" 4 What is the good of a Council,' Cyril would say, * when 
the controversy is already settled without one?' in some- 
Cardinal thing like the frame of mind of the great Duke of 
description Wellington years ago, when he spoke in such 
°ii th f e E?°h(S depreciatory terms of a * county meeting.' .... 
sus. How the Emperor fixed the meeting of the Council 

for Pentecost, June 7 ; how Nestorius made his appearance 
with a body-guard of two imperial cohorts; how Cyril brought 
up his fifty Egyptian Bishops, staunch and eager, not for- 
getting to add to them the stout seamen of his transports; 
how Memnon had a following of forty bishops, and reinforced 
them with a like body of sturdy peasants from his farms; how 
the assembled Fathers were scared and bewildered by these 
preparations for battle, and, wishing it all over, waited with 
impatience a whole fortnight for the Syrian bishops while 
Cyril preached in the churches against Nestorius; how in the 
course of this fortnight some of their number fell sick and 
died ; how the Syrians, on the other hand, had been thrown 
out by the distance of their sees from Antioch (their place of 
rendezvous), from the length of the land journey thence to 
Ephesus, by the wet weather and the bad roads, by the loss of 
their horses, and by the fatigue of their forced marches ; how 
they were thought by Cyril's party to be unpunctual on pur- 
pose, but by themselves to be most unfortunate in their tardi- 
ness, because they wished to shelter Nestorius ; how, when 
they were now a few days' journey from Ephesus, they sent 
on hither an express to herald their approach, but how Cyril 
would not wait beyond the fortnight, though neither the 
Western bishops nor even the Pope's legates had yet arrived ; 
how on June 22 he opened the Council in spite of a pro- 
test from sixty-one out of one hundred and fifty bishops 
there assembled; how within one summer's day he cited, 
condemned, deposed, and degraded Nestorius, and passed 
his twelve theses of doctrine called ' Anathematisms,' which 
the Pope apparently had never seen, and which the 
Syrian bishops, then on their way to Ephesus, had repudiated 
the year before as Apollinarian ; and how, as if reckless of 



COUNCIL AND CREED OF CONSTANTINOPLE. 295 

this imputation, he suffered to stand among the formal testi- 
monies to guide the Bishops in their decision gathered 
from the Fathers, and still extant, an extract from a writing 
of Timotheus, the Apollinarian, if not of Apollinarius himself, 
ascribiug this heretical document to Pope Julius, the friend of 
Athanasius ; how in the business of the Council he showed 
himself confidential with Eutyches, afterwards the author of 
that very Monophysite heresy of which Apollinarius was the 
forerunner ; how on the fifth day after these proceedings the 
Syrian bishops arrived, and at once, with the protection of an 
armed force, and without the due forms of ecclesiastic law, 
held a separate Council of forty-three bishops, Theodoret 
being one of them, and anathematized Cyril and Memnon and 
their followers; and how the Council terminated in a dis- 
cussion, which continued for nearly two years after it, till at 
length Cyril, John, and Theodoret, and the others on either 
side, made up the quarrel by mutual explanations — all this is 
matter of history." 

Such is the summary of one not like'y to overcharge the 
picture of the misdeeds of the Couuoil of Ephesus. We 
will add the literal report of :omo of the scenes that took 
place at the Council of Chalcedon. It trom the Acts of the 
Council.* 

" The illustrious Judges and the honorable Senate ordered 
that the most reverend Bishop Theodoret should enter, that 
he may be a partaker of the Council, because the Report of 
holy Archbishop Leo had restored the bishopric of^S^ 1 
to him ; and the most sacred and pious Emperor don. 
has determined that he is to be present at the Holy Council. 
And on the entrance of Theodoret, the most reverend bishops 
of Egypt, Illyricum, and Palestine called out : * Have mercy 
upon us! The faith is destroyed. The Canons cast him out. 
Cast out the teacher of Nestorius.' The most religious bishops 
of the East and those of Pontus, Asia, and Thrace shouted 
out: 'We had to oign a blank paper; we were scourged, and 
so we signed. Cast out the Manichaeans ; cast out the enemies 
of Flavian ; cast out the enemies of the Faith.' Dioscorus, 
the most religious Bishop of Alexandria, said : * Why is Cyril 

* Hardouin, ii. 74. 



296 CHRISTIAN INSTITUTIONS. 

cast out? He it is who is anathematized by Theodoret.' 
The Eastern and Pontic end Asian and Thracian most relig- 
ious bishops shouted out: 'Cast out Dioscorus the murderer. 
"Who does not know the deeds of Dioscorus?' The Egyptian 
and the Illyrian and the Palestinian most religious bishops 
shouted out: 'Long years to tho Empress!' The Eastern 
and the most religious bishops with .hem shouted out : * Cast 
out the murderers!' The Egyptian;, and the most religious 
bishops with them shouted out: 'Th~ Empress has cast out 
Nestorius. Long years to the Orthodox Empress. The 
Council will not receive Theodoret.' Theodoret, the most 
religions bishop, came up into the midst and said: * I have 
offered petitions to the most godlike, most religious and Christ- 
loving masters of the world, and 1 have related the disasters 
which have befallen me, and I claim that they shall be read.' 
The most illustrious Judges and the most honorable Senate 
said: 'Theodoret, the most religious bishop, having received 
his proper place from the most holy Archbishop of the re- 
nowned Rome, has occupied now the place of an accuser. 
Wherefore suffer that there be not confusion at the hearing, 
and that the things which have had a beginning may be 
finished, for prejudice from the appearance of the most relig- 
ious Theodoret will occur to no one, reserving afterwards every 
argument foi you and for him if you desire to make one on 
one side or the other; especially if without writing there ap- 
pears to be a testimony to his orthodoxy from the most 
religious Bishop of Antioch, the Great City.' And after 
Theodoret, the most religious bishop, had sat down in the 
midst, the Eastern and the most religious bishops who were 
with them shouted out: 'lie is worthy! lie is worthy!' 
The Egyptians and the most religious bishops who were with 
them shouted out: 'Do not call him a bishop. He is not a 
bishop. Cast out the fighter against God ! Cast out the 
Jew ! ' The Easterns and the most religions bishops who were 
with them shouted out: 'The Orthodox for 1 he Council! Cast 
out the rebels ! Cast out the murderers ! ' The Egyptians and 
the most religious bishops who were with them shouted out: 
" Cast out the fighter against God ? Cast out the insulter 
against Christ! Long years to the Empress! Long years to 
the Emperor I Long years to the Orthodox Emperor I Theo- 



COUNCIL AND CREED OF CONSTANTINOPLE. 297 

doret has anathematized Cyril.' The Easterns and the most 
religious bishops who were with them shouted out: 'Cast 
out the murderer Dioscorus ! ' The Egyptians and the most 
religious bishops with them shouted out: 'Long years to 
the Senate ! lie has not the right of speech. lie is ex- 
pelled from the whole Synod ! ' Basil, the most religious 
Bishop of Trajanopolis, in the province of Rhodope, rose up 
and said: 'Theodoret has been condemned by us.' The 
Egyptians and the most religious bishops with them shouted 
out: 'Theodoret has accused Cyril. We cast out Cyril if we 
receive Theodoret. The Canons cast out Theodoret. God 
has turned away from him.' The most illustrious Judges and 
the most honorable Senate said: 'These vulgar cries are not 
worthy of bishops, nor will they assist either side. Suffer, 
therefore, the reading of all the documents.' The Egyptians 
and the most religious bishops with them shouted out : ' Cast 
out one man, and we will all hear. We shout out in the 
Cause of Religion. We say these things for the sake of the 
Orthodox Faith.' The most illustrious Judges and the honor- 
able Senate said: 'Rather acquiesce, in God's name, that the 
hearing of the documents should take place, and concede that 
all shall be read in proper order.' And at last they were 
silent. And Constantine, the most holy Secretary and Magis- 
trate of the Divine Synod, read these documents." 

One more painful scene must be given — the insistence that 
Theodoret should pronounce a curse on his ancient friend. 
" The most reverend bishops all stood before the rails of 
the most holy altar and shouted : ' Theodoret must now anath- 
ematize Nestorius.' Theodoret, the most reverend bishop, 
passed into the midst and said : ' I gave my petition to the 
most divine and religious Emperor, and I gave the documents 
to the most reverend bishops occupying the place of the most 
sacred Archbishop Leo ; and, if you think fit, they shall be 
sent to you, and you will know what I think.' The most 
reverend bishops shouted : ' We want nothing to be read — 
only anathematize Nestorius.' Theodoret, the most reverend 
bishop, said : ' I was brought up by the orthodox, I was taught 
by the orthodox, I have preached orthodoxy, and not only 
Nestorius and Eutyches, but any man who thinks not rightly, 
I avoid and count him an alien.' The most reverend bishops 

13* 



298 CHRISTIAN INSTITUTIONS. 

shouted out: 'Speak plainly; anathema to Nestorius and his 
doctrine — anathema to Nestorius and to those who befriend 
him ! ' " Theodoret, the most reverend bishop, said : " Of truth 
I do not speak, except that the Creed is pleasing to God. I 
came to satisfy you, not because I think of my country, not 
because T desire honor, but because I have been falsely ac- 
cused, and I anathematize every impenitent heretic. I anath- 
ematize Nestorius and Eutyches, and every one who says 
that there are two Sons." Whilst he was speaking, the most 
reverend bishops shouted out-: " Speak plainly ; anathematize 
Nestorius and those who think with him." Theodoret, the 
most reverend bishop, said : " Unless I set forth at length my 
faith I cannot speak. I believe" — And whilst he spoke the 
most reverend bishops shouted : " He is a heretic ! he is a 
Nestorian ! Thou art the heretic ! Anathema to Nestorius and 
to any one who does not say that the Holy Virgin Mary is the 
Parent of God, and who divides the only begotten Son into 
two Sons." Theodoret, the most reverend bishop, said : 
" Anathema to Nestorius and to whoever denies that the Holy 
Virgin Mary is the Parent of God, and who divides the only 
begotten Son into two Sons. I have subscribed the definition 
of faith and the epistle of the most holy Archbishop Leo." 
And after all this he said, " Farewell." * 

It is the conduct of the 3d and 4th Councils in the col- 
lective capacity which more than justifies the objections of 
Gregory Nazianzen to the 2d Council. It is this which repre- 
sents the official voice of the clergy of the Church in that age. 
The only glimmer of common sense. and charity is in the 
conduct of the Imperial Commissioners, who controlled and 
guided the Council of Chalcedon. The faithfulness of the re- 
porters lets us see step by step Theodoret's agonizing reluc- 
tance openly to disavow his friend, and at last his indignant 
"Farewell." 

But there is descernible at times the indication of a better feel- 
ing through this furious party spirit. John of Antioch with a the 
Moderate eastern bishops" — Flavian himself at the earlier 
tendencies, period — resolutely continued to insist on the duty of 
conciliatory measures. The Archbishop of Rome, also, espe- 

* Hardouin, ii. 448. 



COUNCIL AND CREED OF CONSTANTINOPLE. 299 

cially after the experience of the Robber Council, recommended 
a halt in the vehement pursuit after heresy, and to be content 
with letting things alone. Above all there is the one man, 
Theodoret, whose position, with many drawbacks, may in some 
respects be compared to the isolated position of Lord Falkland. 
He had the courage to defend his former friend Nestorias — 
to declare that he had never been properly deposed, and that 
his successor would be an usurper. He submitted at the last, 
and brought his ancient friend Alexander of Hierapolis to 
submit also, but only for the sake of peace. He rejoiced with 
an exceeding joy on hearing of the repose of the Christian 
world on the death of the turbulent Cyril — " The East and 
Egypt are henceforth united ; envy is dead, and heresy is 
buried with her." * He was still attacked with ignoble ani- 
mosity by Dioscorus. But on the whole, and with a formal 
submission on his part, he was accepted. The admiration in 
which he was held is to a certain degree an anticipation of the 
judgment of the English historian, — "Who would not meet 
the judgment of the Divine Redeemer loaded with the errors 
of Nestorius rather than with the barbarities of Cyril?" j It 
may also be a comment on the saying of the contemporary 
Isidroe, " Sympathy such as Theodoret's may not see clearl) 7 , 
but antipathy such as Cyril's does not see at all." \ 

It was in accordance with this more moderate feelir.g that we 
may believe the decree to have been issued which has made 
the Council of Ephesus memorable. 

In the sixth session, in a spirit which endeavored to control 
the ardor of controversy, it was ordered that no Decree of 
one should set forth or put together or compose S£Sta 
any creed other § than that defined at Nicsea on new creed. 
pain of deposition if clergy, of excommunication if laity. The 
original form of the Creed of Nicaea, which this decree is 
intended to guard, must here be given : 

* The genuineness of this letter has been doubted, but chiefly because of its 
attack on Cyril. It was quoted against Theodoret at the fifth General Council. 
See the question argued on both sides in Hefele, iii. p. 851. 

+ Milman's Latin Christianity, i. 145. 

X Quoted in Cardinal Newman's Historical Sketches, ii. 356. The whole letter 
is worth reading. 

§ It has been argued that erepav means of "a discordant creed," and is dis- 
tinguished from aAArjf, " another." This is completely disproved by Professor 
Swainson, Nicene and Apostles'' Creeds Compared, p. 166, who shows that the 
two words were used promiscuously. 



300 CHRISTIAN INSTITUTIONS. 

We believe in one God, the Father Almighty, Maker of all things 
both visible and invisible; and in one Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of 
God, begotten from the Father, only begotten, that is to say, from 
the substance of the Father; God of God, Light of Light, true God 
of true God; begotten, not. made; of one substance with the Father, 
by Whom all things were made, both things in heaven and things 
on the earth; Who for us men and for our salvation came down, 
and was made flesh ; was made man, suffered, and rose again on 
the third day; ascended into the heavens; cometh to judge the 
quick and the dead; and in the Holy Spirit. But those who say 
there was a time when He was not, and before being begotten He 
was not, and that He came out of what was not existing, or that 
He is of another person (v7Zo6rd68GoS) or essence (ovtiia), or is cre- 
ated, or is variable, or is changeable, — all these the Catholic and 
Apostolic Church anathematizes. 

With this decision the Council of Ephesus believed that it 
had forever excluded the possibility of any new confession of 
faith, and had placed the Creed of Nicsea on an impregnable 
basis. The motive is obvious : to protect what had already 
been done in the first General Council, and to guard against 
the multiplication of creeds, of which that age had already had 
sufficient experience. It is curious that in both particulars 
this decree entirely failed. The Creed of Nicsea, as thus set 
forth, has now been discontinued throughout the whole 
Church of the West, and, with the exception of the Mono- 
physite, Nestorian, and perhaps the Armenian Churches,* 
throughout the whole Church of the East. Its anathemas are 
no longer recited, although in the time of its first promulgation 
they were regarded as of the utmost importance ;f and in 
other respects, as shall be noticed presently, its contents have 
undergone serious modifications. The creeds which it was in- 
tended to prevent have been multiplied beyond imagination in 
the numberless creeds of the fifth century, the Athanasian 
Creed of the ninth, the confessions of Trent, Augsburg, 
Geneva, and London of the sixteenth century. 

It is by no means clear by what process the change was 
f effected, but we can faintly trace it through the dis- 
Constanti- cussions of the time. The first step, as usual in 
nople. these innovations, was the most momentous. Pre- 

vious to the Council of Constantinople, which, as we have already 

* See Swainson's Nicene and Apostles' 1 Creeds Compared, p. 143. 
t See Lectures on Eastern Church,, Lect. IV. 



COUNCIL AND CREED OF CONSTANTINOPLE. 301 

seen, adopted no creed of its own, there was a creed existing 
in the writings of Epiphanius,* which agreed in many respects 
with the creed now commonly, but erroneously, known as the 
Creed of Constantinople. Besides this, there is a considera- 
ble resemblance between the present form of that creed and 
what is preserved to us as the Creed of Jerusalem f in the 
writings of Cyril, the bishop of that city. There is, further, 
a late tradition that the form of the creed now professing to 
be that of Constantinople was drawn up by Gregory of Nyssa, 
who was present, as we have seen, in that assembly. But it 
was in the Council of Chalcedon, for the first time, that we 
have the startling announcement made by Aetius, Archdeacon 
of Constantinople, that he was going to read what had been 
determined upon by the one hundred and fifty bishops con- 
gregated in Constantinople. It is conjectured that, from one 
or other of the three sources indicated, from the writings of 
Epiphanius, or of Cyril of Jerusalem, or of Gregory of Nyssa, 
this creed may have been the subject of some conversation in 
the Council of Constantinople, and that this was made the 
ground or the pretext of its being represented by Aetius as 
the Creed of that Council itself. The accuracy of Aetius, as 
of the other members of the Council, is not above suspicion. J 
The creed was as follows : 

We believe in one God, the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven 
and earth, and of all things visible and invisible; and in one Lord 
Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the only begotten, Who was begot- 
ten from the Father before all worlds. Light of Light, true God of 
true God; begotten, not made; of one substance with the Father, 
by Whom all things exist; Who for us men and for our salvation 
came clown and was made flesh of the Holy Ghost and of Mary 
the Virgin, and was made man, and was crucified for us under 
Pontius Pilate, and suffered and was buried, and rose again the 
third day according to the Scriptures, and ascended into the 
heavens, and sitteth on the right hand of the Father, and cometh 
again with glory to judge the quick and the dead; of whose king- 
dom there shall be no end; and in the Spirit, which is holy, which 
is sovereign and lifegiving, which proceedeth from the Father; 
Which with the Father and the Son is worshipped and glorified ; 

* Epiphanius, Anchoratus (pp. 77-83), a.d. 374. 

t See Hort's Dissertations, p. 74, in which it is argued with much learning 
that the Creed was on the basis of the Creed of Jerusalem. 

% Swainson's Nicene and Apostles' 1 Creeds, pp. 94-96; Tillemont, Lx. p. 421; 
xiv. p. 442; Hort's Dissertations, pp. 74-76. 



302 CHRISTIAN INSTITUTIONS. 

Which spake by the prophets; in one holy Catholic and Apostolic 
Church; we acknowledge one Baptism for the remission of sins; 
we look for the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world 
to come. 

This creed, although twice formally recited at the Council 
of Chalcedon, yet was not allowed to take the exclusive place 
given by the Council of Ephesus to the Creed of Nicaea. The 
decree of Ephesus was still sufficiently powerful to restrain the 
Chalcedonian Fathers from introducing this creed, so called of 
Constantinople, into the place of the one authorized Confes- 
sion of Faith. But as time rolled on this provision was 
doubly set aside. The Creed of Nicaea, as we have seen, is 
now read in no European church; and the creed professedly 
of Constantinople, really the production of some unknown 
church or father, gradually superseded it. The Emperor 
Justin, in the year 568, first ordered that it should be recited 
in the public services of the Church; and from that moment 
it has assumed its present position. 

It is difficult to trace precisely the motives by which this 
great change was effected. It would appear, however, to have 
been the result of that lull in ecclesiastical controversy which 
succeeded to the terrible scenes of the Ephesian and Chalcedo- 
nian Councils.* Some of the additions to the Nicene Creed 
might have seemed to have incurred the censure of the Ephesian 
Council not only in the letter but in the spirit. The clause, 
" He was begotten of the Holy Ghost and of Mary the Virgin," f 
did not exist in the Creed of Nicaea, and was in fact vehemently 
contested in the Council of Ephesus, as having been brought 
forward by Nestorius and as expressive of his view. The 
clauses also relating to the Divine Spirit were not contained 
in the original Creed of Nicaea, and were perhaps added in or- 
der to meet the Macedonian heretics. The omission or trans- 
position of the words " God of God," " the Only begotten," 
** that is to say, from the substance of the Father," are, to say 
the least, unwarranted interferences with a document where 
every word and every position of every word are deemed 
of importance. But the Creed of Chalcedon (or Constantino- 
ple), however doubtful its origin, may still be regarded as, on 

* Hort's Dissertations, pp. 110-186. t Ibid. p. 113. 



COUNCIL AND CBEED OF CONSTANTINOPLE. 303 

the whole, an improvement on that memorable document 
which it supplanted, although under the penalty of depriva- 
tion of their orders to all the clergy and bishops who use it, 
and of excommunication to the laity who adopt it. The ac- 
quiescence (if so be) of the original Council of Constantinople 
in a private document which came before them, sanctioned by 
the authority of Cyril of Jerusalem and of Gregory of Nyssa, 
would be in conformity with the abstinence from further dog- 
matism into which they were driven almost inevitably by a weari- 
ness of the whole transaction in which they were involved. 
With this also would agree the more moderate counsels which 
we have already noticed, belonging to what may be called the 
central party at Ephesus and Chalcedon, and the deference at 
last paid to Theodoret. The total omission of the Nicene 
anathemas was a distinct step in this direction. The condem- 
nation of any one who expressed that the Son was of a dif- 
ferent "person" (or "hypostasis") from the Father might 
well become startling to those who were becoming familiar 
with the later formula, which at last issued in the directly con- 
trary proposition by pronouncing a like anathema on any one 
who maintained that He was of the same " hypostasis." 

It was one of the constant charges against Basil and Gregory 
that they were unwilling to define precisely and polemically 
the doctrine of the Divine Spirit. Those who read the expo- 
sition of this doctrine as set forth in the Greek* of these 
clauses will be surprised to see how wonderfully the harshnesses 
and roughnesses that appear in the English or Latin translation 
disappear in the subtle, yet simple, language of the original. 
What may have been the feelings of f he followers of Macedo- 
nius we know not ; but we may be certain that no sect now 
existing, whether belonging to the so-called orthodox or the 
so-called heretical churches, could find any difficulty in accept- 
ing, in their original form, the abstract and general phrases in 
which the Biblical doctrine of the impersonality and neutrality 
of the Sacred Influence is set forth. 

Again, the limitation of the holy inspiration (the " Holy 



* To nvevfia, to Kvptov, to ^woitolov, to sk tov IlaTpb? eKiropevdnevov, to avv TLarpC 
Kcu. Yl<u (TVfi7rpo<TKWOVfJi€vov OT>v6'o£a£d/aevoi', to KaKr^aav 6*id twv IIpo<f>T)TO)V com- 
pared with " the Lord and Giver of Life, -who proceedeth from the Father and 
the Son," etc. See Hort, pp. 82, 85, 86.) 



304 CHRISTIAN INSTITUTIONS. 

Spirit spoke by the prophets") is a remarkable instance at 
once of insight into the true nature of the Biblical writings, 
and also of the moderation of the highest minds of that age, 
compared with the fanciful and extravagant theories that have 
sometimes prevailed in modern times on that subject. The 
other parts of the Bible, the other writings of the great and 
good, are no doubt the offspring of the Divine Mind, but it is 
in the prophetical writings that the essence of Christian mo- 
rality and doctrine is brought out. 

Yet once more, the definition of Baptism (" I believe in one 
Baptism for the remission of sins "), which has been some- 
times quoted as if decisive of the whole question then at issue 
on the intricate question of the mystical or moral effect of 
Baptism, is couched in terms so studiously general as to include 
not only Christian Baptism, but the Baptism of John, from 
which, in the language of technical theology, no transcendental 
operations could be expected. Only by the most violent 
anachronisms and distortions of language can the scholastic 
doctrines of the sudden transformation of baptized infants be 
imported into words which embrace the doctrine of Baptism 
in the largest formula which the comprehensive language of 
Scripture has furnished.* 

Again, the questionable phrase, " the Resurrection of the 
Flesh " in the Apostles' Creed is here represented by the Bib- 
lical expression, "Resurrection of the Dead." 

Lastly, it is to be observed that Nicephorus ascribes all these 
changes to Gregory of Nyssa, whose great name, if he in any 
way took them up, would, more than any other single cause, 
have led to their popular acceptance, not only from his own 
learning and genius, but from the fame of his brother Basil, 
and from the influence — at any rate at the beginning of the 
Council — of his friend. The tradition that these words were 
derived from Gregory of Nyssa, whether borne out by histori- 
cal evidence or not, has never been disputed on dogmatical 
grounds, is important as showing that the orthodox Eastern 
Church was not ashamed of receiving its most solemn declara- 
tion of Christian faith from one who, had he lived in our times, 
would have been pronounced by some as a dangerous heretic. 

* See Chapter I. 



COUNCIL AND CREED OF CONSTANTINOPLE. 305 

There can be no doubt in the mind of any one* who has ex- 
amined his writings — and it is freely admitted, indeed urged, 
by theologians without the slightest suspicion of latitudinarian- 
ism — that Gregory of Nyssa held the opinion shared with him 
by Origen, and although less distinctly by Gregory of Nazian- 
zus, that there was a hope for the final restoration of the 
wicked in the other world. And whether or not he actually 
drew up the concluding clauses of the so-called Creed of Con- 
stantinople, there is no doubt that Gregory of Nyssa was pres- 
ent at the Council of Constantinople — that he, if any one, 
must have impressed his own sense upon them — and that to 
him, and through him to the Council, the clause which speaks 
of the "life in the world to come" must have included the 
hope that the Divine justice and mercy are not controlled by 
the powers of evil, that sin is not eternal, and that in that 
"world to come" punishment will be corrective and not final, 
and will be ordered by a Love and Justice the height and 
depth of which is beyond tho narrow thoughts of man to 
conceive. 

* See especially Catech. Orat. ch. xxvi. De iis qui premature abripiuntur, ch. 
xv. De Anima et Resurrectione ion Phil. ii. 10; 1 Cor. xv. 28). The contrary- 
has been maintained by a recent writer, Vincenzo, in four volumes, on the 
writings of Gregory of Nyssa. But this is done, not as in former times (Tille- 
mont, vol. ix. p. 602), by denying the genuineness of the passages cited in favor 
of the milder view, but by quoting passages from other parts of his works, 
containing apparently contradictory sentiments. This might be done equally 
in the case of Origen. of Archbishop Tillotson. and of Bishop Newton, and to 
any one who Knows the writings of that age prove absolutely nothing. 



306 CHRISTIAN INSTITUTIONS. 



CHAPTER XVII. 

THE TEN COMMANDMENTS. 

The Ten Commandments were always in the Christian 
Church united with the Lord's Prayer and the Creed (whether 
longer or shorter) as a Christian Institution. In earlier Catho- 
lic times they were used as a framework of moral precepts ; 
in Protestant times they were written conspicuously in the 
churches. In either case there are important principles in- 
volved in the prominence thus given to them which demand 
consideration. In order to do this we must trace the facts to 
their Jewish origin. 

I. Let us first examine what were the Ten Commandments 
Outward in their outward form and appearance when they 
form. were last seen by mortal eyes as the ark was placed 

in Solomon's Temple. 

1. They were written on two tables or blocks of stone or 
rock. The mountains of Sinai are of red and white granite. 
Israelite ar- On two blocks of this granite rock — the most last- 
rangement. j n g an( j almost the oldest kind of rock that is to be 
found in the world, as if to remind us that these Laws were to 
be the beginning and the end of all things — were the Ten 
Commandments, the Ten Words, written. They were written, 
not as we now write them, only on one side of each of the two 
tables, but on both sides, so as to give the idea of absolute 
completeness and solidity. Each block of stone was covered 
behind and before with the sacred letters. Again, they were 
not arranged as we now arrange them. In the Fourth, for ex- 
ample, the reason for keeping holy the seventh day is, in 
Exodus, because "God rested on the seventh day from the 
work of creation ;" in Deuteronomy it is to remind them that 
"they were once strangers in the land of Egypt." Probably, 
therefore, these reasons were not actually written on the stone, 
but were given afterwards, at two different times, by way of 



THE TEN COMMANDMENTS. 307 

explanation:, so that the first four Commandments, as they 
were written on the tables, were shorter than they are now. 
Here, as everywhere in the Bible, there may be many reasons 
for doing what is right. It is the doing of the thing, and not 
the particular occasion or reason, which makes it right. An- 
other slight difference was that the Commandments probably 
were divided into two equal portions, so that the Fifth Com- 
mandment, instead of being, as it is with us, at the top of the 
second table, was at the bottom of the first. The duty of 
honoring our parents is so like the duty of honoring God, that 
it was put amongst the same class of duties. The duty to 
both, as in the Roman word " pietas," was comprised under the 
same category, and so it is here understood by Josephus, Philo, 
and apparently by St. Paul.* 

These differences between the original and the present ar- 
rangement should be noted, because it is interesting to have 
before us as nearly as we can the exact likeness of those old 
Commandments, and because it is useful to remember how 
even these most sacred and ancient words have undergone 
some change in their outward form since they were first given, 
and yet still are equally true and equally venerable. Religion 
does not consist in counting the syllables of the Bible, but in 
doing what it tells us. 

2. When the Christian Church sprang out of the Jewish 
Church, it did not part with those venerable relics of the ear- 
lier time, but they were still used to teach Christian christian ar- 
children their duty, as Jewish children had been rangements. 
taught before. But there were different arrangements intro- 
duced in different parts of the world. The Talmudic and the 
modern Jewish tradition, taking the Ten Commandments 
strictly as Ten Words or Sentences (Decalogue), makes the 
First to be the opening announcement: "I am the Lord thy 
God, which brought thee out of the land of Egypt," and the 
Second is made up of what in our arrangement would be the 
First and Second combined. The Samaritan division, pre- 
served in the roll on Mount Gerizim, puts the First and Second 
together, as the First, and then addsf at the end an Eleventh, 

* Ewald's History of the People of Israel, vol. i. pp. 581-592, English trans- 
lation, 
t See Professor Pluraptre, in Dictionary of the Bible, vol. iii. pp. 1465, 1466. 



908 CHRISTIAN INSTITUTIONS. 

according to our arrangement, not found in the Hebrew Pen- 
tateuch, which will be noticed as we proceed. 

When the Christians adopted the Commandments there 
were two main differences of arrangement. There was the 
division of Augustine and Bede. This follows the Jewish 
and Samaritan arrangement of combining in one the First 
and Second Commandments of our arrangement. But inas- 
much as it has no Eleventh Commandment, like the Samari- 
tan, nor any "First Word," like the Jewish, it makes out 
die number ten by dividing the last Commandment into two, 
following here the arrangement of the clauses in the Hebrew 
of Deuteronomy, and in the LXX. both of Deuteronomy and 
Exodus, so as to make the Ninth Commandment — "Thou 
shalt not covet thy neighbor's wife," and the Tenth, "Thou 
shalt not covet thy neighbor's house," etc. This is followed 
by the Roman Catholic Church and the Lutheran Church. 
The division followed by Origen and Jerome is the same as 
that followed in England and Scotland. It is common to all 
the Eastern Churches, and all the Reformed Protestant 
Churches. Here, again, the various arrangements give us a 
useful lesson, as showing us how the different parts of our 
doctrine and duty may not be quite put together in the same 
way, and yet be still the same. And also it may remind us 
how the very same arrangements, even in outward things, may 
be made by persons of the most opposite way of thinking ; it 
is a warning not to judge any one by the mere outward sign 
or badge that they wear. No one could be more unlike to 
the Roman Catholic Church than the Reformer Luther, and 
yet the same peculiar arrangement of the Ten Commandments 
was used by him and by them. No one could be more unlike 
to the Eastern Church than John Knox, or Calvin, or Cranmer, 
and yet their arrangement of the Ten Commandments is the 
same. 

IT. What are we to learn from the place which the Ten 
Commandments occupied in the old dispensation ? 

We learn what is the true foundation of all religion. The 
Ten Commandments are simple rules; most of them 
of the Com- can be understood by a child. But still they are 
mandments. the very heart and essence f t h e id Jewish re- 
ligion. They occupy a very small part of the Books of Moses. 



TEE TEN COMMANDMENTS. 309 

The Ten Commandments, and not the precepts about sacri- 
fices and passovers and boundaries and priests, are the words 
which are said to have been delivered in thunder and light- 
ning at Mount Sinai. These, and not any ceremonial ordi- 
nances, were laid up in the Most Holy Place, as the most 
precious heritage of the nation. " There was nothing in the 
ark save the two tables of stone, which Moses put there at 
Horeb." 

Do your duty. This is what they tell us. Do your duty to 
God and your duty to man. Whatever we may believe or feel 
or think, the main thing is that we are to do what is right, 
not to do what is wrong. Therefore it is that in the Church 
of England and in the Reformed Churches of the Continent 
they are still read in the most sacred parts of the service, as if 
to show us that go as far as we can in Christian light and 
knowledge, make as much as we will of Christian doctrine 
or of Christian worship, still we must never lose hold of the 
ancient everlasting lines of duty. 

III. But it may be said, Were not those Ten Command- 
ments given to the Jews of old? Do they not refer to the 
land of Egypt and the land of Palestine ? We love g . . f th 
and serve God, and love and serve our brethren, not Command- 
because it is written in the Ten Commandments, ments - 
but because it is written on the tables of our hearts by the 
Divine Spirit on our spirits and consciences. But herein lies 
the very meaning of their having become a Christian Insti- 
tution, 

In the Sermon on the Mount Jesus Christ took two or three 
of these Commandments, and explained them Himself to the 
people. He took the Sixth Commandment, and showed that 
for us it is not enough to remember, " Thou shalt not kill," 
but that the Commandment went much deeper, and forbade 
all angry thoughts and words. This was intended to apply to 
all the other Commandments. It is not in their letter, but in 
their spirit, that they concern us ; and this, no doubt, is what 
is meant by the prayer which in the Church of England fol- 
lows after each of them, and at the end of all of them, 
" Incline our hearts to keep this Commandment," "Write all 
these Commandments in our hearts, we beseech Thee." 

1. Let us take them one by one in this way. The First 



310 CHRISTIAN INSTITUTIONS. 

Commandment is no longer ours in the letter, for it begins 
The First ^y sa y in g> " I am tne Lord thy God, who brought 
Command- thee out of the land of Egypt." He did not bring 
ment. us U p out f ^ e j an( j £ Egypt, and so completely 

has this ceased to apply to us that in the Commandments as 
publicly read, the Church of England has boldly struck out 
these words altogether from the First Commandment. But 
the spirit of the Commandment still remains ; for we all need 
to be reminded that there is but one Supreme Mind, whose 
praise and blame are, above all, worth having, seeking, or 
deserving. 

2. The Second Commandment is no longer ours in the 
letter, for the sculptures and paintings which we see at every 

turn are what the Second Commandment in its 
Command- letter forbade, and what the Jews, therefore, never 
ment - made. Every statue, every picture, not only in 

every church, but in every street or room, is a breach of the 
letter of the Second Commandment. No Jew would have 
ventured under the Mosaic dispensation to have them. When 
Solomon made the golden lions and oxen in the Temple, it was 
regarded by his countrymen as unlawful. The Mahometan 
world still observes the Second Commandment literally. The 
ungainly figures of the lions in the court of the Alhambra, 
contrasted with the exquisite carving of arabesques and texts 
on the walls, is an exception that amply proves the rule. The 
Christian world has entirely set it aside. But in spirit it is still 
important. It teaches us that we must not make God after our 
likeness, or after any likeness short of absolute moral perfection. 
Any fancies, any doctrines, any practices which lead us to think 
that God is capricious or unjust or untruthful, or that He cares 
for any outward, thing compared with holiness, mercy, and 
goodness — that is the breach of the Second Commandment in 
spirit. It was said truly of an attempt to introduce cere- 
monial forms of the Christian religion, " It is so many ways of 
breaking the Second Commandment." Every attempt to 
purify and exalt our ideas of God is the keeping of the 
Second Commandment in spirit, even although we live amidst 
pictures and statues and sculptures of things in heaven and 
things in earth and things under the earth. 

3. The Third Commandment. Here the original meaning 



THE TEN COMMANDMENTS. 311 

of the Commandment is more elevated and more spiritual than 
that which is commonly given to it. Many see in 
it only a prohibition of profane swearing or false Command- 
swearing. It means this — but it means much more. ment 
It means that we are not to appeal to God's name for any 
unworthy purpose. It is a protest against all those sins which 
have claimed the sanction of God or of religion. The words 
are literally, " Thou shalt not bring the Holy Name to any- 
thing that is vain," that is, to anything that is unholy, hollow, 
empty. The plea and pretext of God's name will not avail as 
an excuse for cruelty or hypocrisy or untruthfulness or unduti- 
fulness. The Eternal will not hold him guiltless who taketh 
His name in vain — that is, who brings it to an unjust or 
unrighteous cause. All the wicked persecutions carried on, all 
the wicked wars waged, all the pious frauds perpetrated in the 
name of the Holy God, are breaches of the Third Command- 
ment, both in its letter and in its spirit. 

4. The Fourth Commandment. Here, as in the Second 
Commandment, there is a wide divergence between the letter 
and the spirit. In its letter it is obeyed by no , 

Christian society whatever, except the Abyssinian command- 
Church in Africa, and the small sect of the Seventh- ment - 
Day Baptists in England. They still keep a day of rest on the 
Saturday, the seventh day of the week. But in every other 
country the seventh day is observed only by the Jews, and not 
by the Christians. And again only by the Jews, and not by 
Christians anywhere, are the Mosaic laws kept which for- 
bade the lighting of a single fire, which forbade the walking 
beyond a single mile, which forbade the employment of a 
single animal, which visited as a capital offence the slightest 
emoloyment on the seventh day. And again, the reasons 
given in the two versions of the Fourth Commandment are 
passed away. We cannot be called, as in Deuteronomy, to re- 
member that we were strangers in the land of Egypt, for many 
of us were never in Egypt at all. We cannot be called, as in 
Exodus, to remember that the earth was made in six days, for 
we most of us know that it took, not six days, but millions of 
ages, to bring the earth from its void and formless state to its 
present condition.. The letter of the Fourth Commandment 
has long ceased. The very name of " the Lord's Day " and 



312 CHRISTIAN INSTITUTIONS. 

of " the first day of the week " is a protest against it. The 
very name of Sabbath is condemned by St. Paul.* The Cat- 
echism of the Church of England speaks of the duty of serv- 
ing God all the days of our life, and not of serving Him on one 
day alone. But the principle which lay at the bottom of the 
Fourth Commandment has not passed away. Just as the pro- 
hibition of statues in the Second Commandment is now best 
carried out by the avoidance of superstitious, unworthy, de- 
grading ideas of the nature of God, so the principle of the 
observance of the Sabbath in the Fourth Commandment is 
aimed against worldly, hard, exacting ideas of the work of 
man. The principle of the Fourth Commandment enjoins the 
sacred duty of rest — for there is an element of rest in the 
Divine Nature itself. It enjoins also the sacred duty of 
kindness to our servants and to the inferior animals ; " for re- 
member that thou wast a servant in the land of Egypt." How 
this rest is to be carried out, within what limits it is to be 
confined, what amount of innocent recreation is to be allowed, 
how far the Continental nations have erred on the one side or 
the Scottish nation on the other side, in their mode of observ- 
ance, whether the observance of the English Sunday is exactly 
what it ought to be, or in what respects it might be improved 
— these are questions which this is not the place to discuss. 
It is enough to say that amidst all the variations in the mode 
of observing the Sunday, it is still possible, and it is stili our 
duty, to bear in mind the principle of the ancient Law. "I 
was in the Spirit on the Lord's Day : " that is what we should 
all strive to attain — to be raised at least for one day in the 
week above the grinding toil of our daily work — above the 
debasing influence of frivolous amusements — above the jang- 
ling of business and controversy — raised into the high and 
holy atmosphere breathed by pure and peaceful lives, bright 
and beautiful thoughts, elevating and invigorating worship. 
Although the day has been changed from the seventh day to 
the first day everywhere — nay, even had it been further changed 
as Calvin intended, from Sunday to Thursday — even had it yet 
been further changed, as Tyndale, the foremost of the English 
Reformers, proposed, from the seventh day to the tenth day — 

* Col. ii. 16. 



THE TEN COMMANDMENTS. 313 

yet still there would survive the solemn obligation founded, 
not on the Law of Moses, but on the Law of God in Nature, 
the obligation of rest and of worship as long as human nature 
remains what it is, as long as the things which are temporal 
are seen, and the things which are eternal are unseen.* 

5. The Fifth Commandment. Here, again, the letter has 
ceased to have any meaning for us. " That thy days may be 
long in the land which the Lord thy God giveth The Fifth 
thee." W . have no claim on the inheritance of the Command- 
land of Canaan. No amount of filial reverence will ment ' 
secure ror us the possession of the goodly heights of Lebanon, 
or the forests of Gilead, or the rushing waters of Jordan. But 
the ordinance of affection and honor to parents has not dimin- 
ished, but grown, with the years which have passed since the 
command wa: first issued. The love of son to mother, the 
honor of children to parents, is far stronger now than in the 
days of * -oses. 

It is often discussed in these days whether this or that prin- 
ciple of religion is natural or supernatural. How often is this 
distinction entirely without meaning ! The Fifth Commandment 
— sacred to the dearest, deepest, purest, noblest aspirations of 
the heart — is natural because it is supernatural, is supernatural 
because it is natural. It is truly regarded as the symbol, as the 
sanction, of the whole framework of civil and religious society. 
Our obedience to law, our love of country, is not a bond of 
mere expediency or accident. It is not a worldly, unspiritual 
ordinance, to be rejected because it crosses some religious 
fancies or interferes with some theological allegory. It is bind- 
ing on the Christian conscience, because it is part of the natural 
religion of the human race and of the best instincts of Christen- 
dom. 

6. The Sixth Commandment. The crime of murder is what 
it chiefly condemns, and no sentimental feelings of modern times 
have ever been able to brino- the murderer down _. _. .. 

i. i i t • ii i i The Sixth 

from that bad preeminence as the worst and most command- 
appalling of human offenders. It is the consummation ment 
of selfishness. It is the disregard of the most precious of God's 
earthly gifts — the gift of life. But the scope of the com- 

* See Prof. TyndalTs admirable Address on the Sabbath at Glasgow. 
14 



314 CHRISTIAN INSTITUTIONS. 

mandment extends much further. In the Christian sense he is 
a breaker of the Sixth Commandment who promotes quarrels 
and jealousies in families, who indulges in fierce, contemptuous 
words, who fans the passions of class against class, of church 
against church, of nation against nation. In the horrors of 
war it is not the innocent soldier killing his adversary in battle, 
but the partisans on whatever side, the ambitious in whatever 
nation, the reckless journalists and declaimersof whatever opin- 
ions, by which angry passions are fostered, that are the true 
responsible authors of the horrors which follow in the train of 
armies and in the fields of carnage. In the violence of civil 
and intestine discord, it is not only human life that is at stake, 
but that which makes human life precious. " As well kill a good 
man as a good book," was the saying of Milton, and so we 
may add, in thinking of those who care neither to preserve nor 
to improve the inheritance which God has given us, " As well 
kill a good man as a good institution." 

7. The Seventh Commandment. Of this it is enough to say 
that here also we know well in our consciences that it is not 

only the shameless villain who invades the sanctity 
Command- of another's home and happiness that falls under 
ment. fae condemnation of that dreadful word which the 

Seventh Commandment uses. It is the reader and writer of 
filthy books; it is the young man or the young woman who 
allows his or her purity and dignity to be soiled and stained 
by loose talk and loose company. If the sacredness of the 
marriage bond be the glory of our English homes, no eccen- 
tricities of genius, no exceptional misfortunes — however much 
we may excuse or pity those who have gone astray — can 
justify us in making light of that which, disregarded in one 
case, is endangered in all, which, if lost in a few cases, is the 
ruin of hundreds. It is not the loss of Christianity, but of civil- 
ization ; not the advance to freedom, but the relapse into bar- 
barism. 

8. The Eighth Commandment. "Thou shalt not steal." 
That lowest, meanest crime of the thief and the robber is not 

all that the Eighth Commandment condemns. It is 
Command- the taking of money which is not our due, and which 
ment. we are forbidden to receive; it is the squandering 

of money which is notour own, on the race-course or at the gam- 



THE TEN COMMANDMENTS. 315 

bling table ; it is the taking advantage of a flaw or an accident 
in a will which gives us property which was not intended for us, 
and to which others have a better claim than we. He is the true 
observer of the Eighth Commandment not only who keeps 
his hands from picking and stealing, but he who renders just 
restitution, he who, like the great Indian soldier, Outram, the 
Bayard of modern times, would not claim any advantage from 
a war which he had victoriously conducted, because he thought 
the war itself was wrong ; he who is scrupulously honest, even 
to the last farthing of his accounts, with master or servant, 
with employer or employed ; he who respects the rights of 
others, not only of the rich against the poor, not only of the 
poor against the rich, but of all classes against each other. 
These, and these only, are the Christian keepers of the Eighth 
Commandment. 

9. The Ninth Commandment. " Thou shalt not bear false 
witness." False witness, deliberate perjury, is the crown and 
consummation of the liar's progress. But what a The Ninth 
world of iniquity is covered by that one word, Lie. Command- 
Careless, damaging statements, thrown hither and ment 
thither in conversation ; reckless exaggeration and romancing, 
only to make stories more pungent ; hasty records of character, 
left to be published after we are dead; heedless disregard 
of the supreme duty and value of truth in all things, — these 
are what we should bear in mind when we are told that we 
are not to bear false witness against our neighbor. A lady 
who had been in the habit of spreading slanderous reports 
once confessed her fault to St. Philip Neri, and asked how 
she should cure it. He said, "Go to the nearest market- 
place, buy a chicken just killed, pluck its feathers all the way 
as you return, and come back to me." She was much sur- 
prised, and when she saw her adviser again, he said, " Now 
go back, and bring me back all the feathers you have scat- 
tered." " But that is impossible," she said ; " I cast away 
the feathers carelessly ; the wind carried them away. How 
can I recover them?" "That," he said, "is exactly like 
your words of slander. They have been carried about in 
every direction ; you cannot recall them. Go, and slander no 
more." 

10. The Tenth Commandment. The form of the Com- 



316 CHRISTIAN INSTITUTIONS. 

mandment speaks only of the possessions of a rude and pas- 
toral people, — the wife of a neighboring chief, the male and 
female slaves, the Syrian ox, the Egyptian ass. But the 
The Tenth principle strikes at the very highest heights of 
Command- civilization and at the very innermost secrets of 
the heart. Greed, selfishness, ambition, egotism, 
self-importance, money-getting, rash speculation, desire of the 
poor to pull down the rich, desire of the rich to exact more 
than their due from the poor, eagerness to destroy the most 
aseful and sacred institutions in order to gratify a social re- 
venge, or to gain a lost place, or to make a figure in the 
world, — these are amongst the wide-reaching evils which are 
included in that ancient but most expressive word " covetous- 
ness." " I had not known sin," says the Apostle Paul, " but 
for the law which says, Thou shalt not covet." So we may 
all say. No one can know the exceeding sinfulness of sin 
who does not know the guilt of selfishness ; no one can know 
the exceeding beauty of holiness who has not seen or felt the 
glory of unselfishness. 

IV. These are the Ten Commandments — the summary of the 
morality of Judaism, the basis of the morality of Christian 
Churches. We have heard it said of such and such 
great Com- an one with open, genuine countenance, that he 
mandments. i ooted as if he had the Ten Commandments writ- 
ten on his face. It was remarked by an honest, pious Roman 
Catholic of the last generation, on whom a devout but feeble 
enthusiast was pressing the use of this and that small practice 
of devotion, " My devotions are much better than those. They 
are the devotions of the Ten Commandments of God." 

In the Reformed American Church and in the Reformed 
Churches of France, and intended by the last Reformers of the 
English Liturgy in 1689, though they failed to carry the point, 
after the Ten Commandments are read in church comes this 
memorable addition, which we ought all to supply in memory, 
even although it is not publicly used : " Hear also what our 
Lord Jesus Christ saith." This is what is taken as the ground 
of the explanation of the Commandments in all Christian Cate- 
chisms of our duty to God. Everything in what we call the 
first table is an enlargement of that one single command, 
" Thou shalt love the Lord thy God." Everything in the sec- 



THE TEN COMMANDMENTS. 317 

ond table of our duty to our neighbor is an enlargement of the 
command, "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself." The 
two together are the whole of religion. Each of itself calls our 
attention to what is the first and chief duty of each of the two 
tables. God, the Supreme Goodness, and the Supreme Truth, 
is to be served with no half service ; it must be a service that 
goes through our whole lives. We must place Him above 
everything else. He is all in all to us. Truth, justice, purity 
are in Him made the supreme object of our devotion and affec- 
tion. " Let no man," says Lord Bacon, " out of weak conceit 
of authority or ill-applied moderation, think or imagine that a 
man can search too far or be too well supplied in the Book of 
God's Word or the Book of God's Works." Man is to be 
served also with a love like that which we give to ourselves. 
Selfishness is here made the root of all evil ; unselfishness the 
root of all goodness. Toleration of every difference of race or 
creed is summed up in the expression " thy neighbor." 

It was a saying of Abraham Lincoln, " When any church 
will inscribe over its altar as its sole qualification for member- 
ship the Saviour's condensed statement of the substance of 
both Law and Gospel in those two great Commandments, that 
church will I join with all my heart and with all my soul." 
There may be an exaggeration in the expression, but the thing 
intended is true. If any church existed which in reality and in 
spirit put forth those two Commandments as the sum and sub- 
stance of its belief, as that to which all else tended, and for the 
sake of which all was done, it would indeed take the first place 
amongst the churches of the world, because it would be the 
Church that most fully had expressed the mind and intention 
of the Founder of Christendom.* 

Y. There was an addition which the English divines of the 
time of William III. wished to make to the recital of the Ten 
Commandments in church. It was baffled by the The Eight 
obstinate prejudice of the inferior clergy. But its Beatitudes, 
intention was singularly fine. It was that, on the three 
great festivals, instead of the Ten Commandments of Mount 
Sinai should be read the Eight Beatitudes of the Mountain 



* The subject is treated at length in "The Two Great Commandments, 
Addresses at St. Andrews, pp. 155-187. 



318 CHRISTIAN INSTITUTIONS. 

of Galilee, in order to remind us that beyond and above 
the Law of Duty, there is the happiness of that inward spirit 
which is at once the spring and the result of all duty — the 
happiness, the blessedness which belongs to the humble, the 
sincere, the unselfish, the eager aspirant after goodness, the 
generous, the pure, the courageous. That happiness is the 
highest end and aim of all religion. 

VI. There is one addition yet to be made, which has never 
been suggested by authority. 

We sometimes hear in conversation of an Eleventh Com- 
The Elev mandment invented by the world, in cynical con- 
enthCom- tempt of the old commandments, or in pursuit of 
mandment gome selfigh 0f ^cked end> Qf gucll an Eleventh 

Commandment, whether in jest or earnest, we need not here 
speak. It is enough to be reminded of it, and pass it by. 
But there is also what may be called the Eleventh Command- 
ment of churches and sects. In the oldest and most venerable 
of all ecclesiastical divisions — the ancient Samaritan communi- 
ty, who have for centuries, without increase or diminution, 
gathered round Mount Gerizim as the only place where men 
ought to worship — there is, as noticed above, to be read upon 
the aged parchment-scroll of the Pentateuch this command- 
ment, added to the other Ten, " Thou shalt build an altar on 
Mount Gerizim, and there only shalt thou worship."* Faith- 
fully have they followed that command; excommunicating, 
and excommunicated by, all other religious societies, they cling 
to that Eleventh Commandment as equal, if not superior, to 
of the all the rest. This is the true likeness of what all 

Samaritans; churches and sects, unless purified by a higher spirit, 
are tempted to add. "Thou shalt do something for this par- 
ticular community, which none else may share. Thou shalt 
do this over and above, and more than thy plain duties to God 
and man. Thou shalt build thine altar on Mount Gerizim, for 
here alone our fathers have said that God is to be worshipped. 
Thou shalt maintain the exclusive sacredness of this or that 



* The Eleventh (or in the Samaritan division, the Tenth) Commandment of 
the Samaritans is here somewhat abridged. It consists of Deut. xxvii. 2-7, aa. 
30, interpolated in Exod. xx., with the alteration of Ebal into Gerizim. I ven- 
ture to quote the substance of two passages from Lectures on the Church of 
Scotland, pp. 3, 4, 6-8. There is a striking story of Archbishop Usher in con- 
nection with it (see Ibid. pp. 4-6). 



THE TEN COMMANDMENTS. 319 

place, this or that word, this or that doctrine, this or that party, 
this or that institution, this or that mode of doing good. Thou 
shalt worship God thus and thus only." This is the Eleventh 
Commandment according to sects and parties and 
partisans. For this we are often told to contend more 
than for all the other Ten together. For an Eleventh Command- 
ment like to this, half the energies of Christendom have been 
spent, and spent in vain. For some command like this men have 
fought and struggled and shed their own blood and the blood 
of others, as though it were a command engraven on the tables 
of the everlasting law; and yet, again and again and again, 
it has been found in after ages that such a command was an 
addition as venerable, perhaps, and as full of interest, but as 
superfluous, as misleading, as disproportionate, as that Eleventh 
Samaritan commandment, — "Thou shalt build an altar on 
Mount Gerizim, and there only shalt thou worship." 

But there is a divine Eleventh Commandment, — " A new 
commandment I give unto you, that ye love one G f the Gos- 
another ; As I have loved you, that ye also should P el « 
love one another." 

It is contained in the parting discourse of St. John's Gospel, 
and it is introduced there as a surprise to the Apostles. 
" What ? Are not the Ten Commandments enough ? Must 
we always be pressing forward to something new ? What is 
this that he saith, ' A new commandment ? ' We cannot tell 
what He saith." Nevertheless it corresponds to a genuine want 
of the human heart. 

Beyond the Ten Commandments there is yet a craving for 
something even beyond duty, even beyond reverence. There 
is a need which can only be satisfied by a new, by an Eleventh 
Commandment, which shall be at once old and new — which 
shall open a new field of thought and exertion for each genera- 
tion of men ; which shall give a fresh, undying impulse to its 
older sisters — the youngest child (so to speak) of the patri- 
archal family. The true new commandment which Jesus 
Christ gave was, in its very form and fashion, peculiarly charac- 
teristic of the Christian Religion. 

The novelty of the commandment lay in two points. First, 
it was new, because of the paramount, predominant place 
which it gave to the force of the human affections, the enthu- 



320 CHRISTIAN- INSTITUTIONS. 

siasm for the good of others, which was — instead of cere- 
monial, or mere obedience, or correctness of belief — henceforth 
to become the appointed channel of religious fervor. And, 
secondly, it was new, because it was founded on the appear- 
ance of a new character, a new manifestation of the character 
of Man, a new manifestation of the character of God. Even 
if the Four Gospels had been lost, we should see, from the 
urgency with which the Apostles press this new grace of Love 
or Charity upon us, that some diviner vision of excellence had 
crossed their minds. The very word which they used to 
express it was new, for the thing was new, the example was 
new, and the consequences therefore were new also. 

It may be said that the solid blocks or tables on which the 
Ten Commandments were written were of the granite rock of 
Sinai, as if to teach us that all the great laws of duty to God 
and duty to man were like that oldest primeval foundation of 
the world — more solid, more enduring than all the other strata ; 
cutting across all the secondary and artificial distinctions of 
mankind ; heaving itself up, now here, now there ; throwing 
up here the fantastic crag, the towering peak, there the long 
range which unites or divides the races of mankind. That is 
the universal, everlasting character of Duty. But as that 
granite rock itself has been fused and wrought together by a 
central fire, without which it could not have existed at all, so 
also the Christian law of Duty, in order to perform fully its 
work in the world, must have been warmed at the heart and 
fed at the source by a central fire of its own — and that central 
fire is Love — the gracious, kindly, generous, admiring, tender 
movements of the human affections ; and that central fire itself 
is kept alive by the consciousness that there has been in the 
world a Love beyond all human love, a devouring fire of 
Divine enthusiasm on behalf of our race, which is the Love of 
Christ. It is not contrary to the Ten Commandments. It is 
not outside of them, it is within them ; it is at their core ; it 
is wrapped up in them, as the particles of the central heat of 
the globe were encased within the granite tables in the Ark of 
the Temple. "What was it that made him undertake the 
support of the Abolition of the Slave-trade ?" was asked of an 
eminent statesman respecting the conduct of another. "It 
was his love of the human race." 



THE TEN COMMANDMENTS. 321 

This was what the Apostle Paul meant by saying, " Love is 
the fulfilling of the Law." This is what St. Peter meant by 
saying, "Above all things, have fervent," enthusiastic "Love." 
This is what St. John meant when, in his extreme old age, he 
was carried into the market-place of Ephesus, and, according 
to the ancient tradition, repeated over and over again to his 
disciples the words which he had heard from his Master, 
"Little children, love one another." They were vexed by 
hearing this commandment, this Eleventh Commandment, 
repeated so often. They asked for something more precise, 
more definite, more dogmatic ; but the aged Apostle, we are 
told, had but one answer : " This is the sum and substance of 
the Gospel ; if you do this, I have nothing else to teach you." 
He did not mean that ceremonies, doctrines, ordinances were 
of no importance ; but that they were altogether of secondary 
importance. He meant that they were on the outside of 
religion, whereas this commandment belonged to its inner- 
most substance ; that, if this commandment were carried out, 
all that was good in all the rest would follow ; that, if this 
commandment were neglected, all that was good in all the rest 
would fade away, and all that was evil and one-sided and 
exaggerated would prevail and pervert even the good. He 
meant and his Master meant that, as the ages rolled on, other 
truths may be folded up and laid aside ; but that this would 
always need to be enforced and developed. 

Love one another in spite of differences, in spite of faults, in 
spite of the excesses of one or the defects of another. Love 
one another, and make the best of one another, as He loved us, 
who, for the sake of saving what was good in the human soul, 
forgot, forgave, put out of sight what was bad — who saw and 
loved what was good even in the publican Zaccheus, even in 
the peintent Magdalen, 'even in the expiring malefactor, even 
in the heretical Samaritan, even in the Pharisee Nicodemus, 
even in the heathen soldier, even in the outcast Canaanite. 
Make the most of what there is good in institutions, in opinions, 
in communities, in individuals. It is very easy to do the 
reverse, to make the worst of what there is of evil, absurd, and 
erroneous. By so doing we shall have no difficulty in making 
estrangements more wide, and hatreds and strifes more abun- 
dant, and errors more extreme. It is very easy to fix our 

14* 



322 CHRISTIAN INSTITUTIONS. 

attention only on the weak points of those around us, to 
magnify them, to irritate them to, aggravate them ; and by 
so doing we can make the burden of life unendurable, and can 
destroy our own and others' happiness and usefulness wherever 
we go. But this is not the new love wherewith we are to love 
one another. That love is universal, because in its spirit we 
overcome evil simply by doing good. We drive out error 
simply by telling the truth. We strive to look on both sides 
of the shield of truth. We strive to speak the truth in love, 
that is, without exaggeration or misrepresentation ; concealing 
nothing, compromising nothing, but with the effort to under- 
stand each other, to discover the truth which lies at the bottom 
of the error ; with the determination cordially to love whatever 
is lovable even in those in whom we cordially detest whatever 
is detestable. And, in proportion as we endeavor to do this, 
there may be a hope that men will see that there are, after all, 
some true disciples of Christ left in the world, " because they 
have love one to another." 



THE END. 



ADDENDA. 



To p. 47. 

Deerhurst Church was arranged in this manner in 1603, and it 
continued with its table east and west till 1846. It is now arranged 
north and south, but otherwise is in the same position. 

To p. 70 

"The requirement of the Sacrament has, fortunately, never been 
to any great extent one of the requirements of the social code, and a 
rite which of all Christian institutes is the most admirable in its 
touching solemnity has for the most part been left to sincere and 
earnest believers. Something of the fervor, something of the deep 
sincerity of the early Christians, may even now be seen around the 
sacred table, and prayers instinct with the deepest and most solemn 
emotion may be employed without appearing almost blasphemous 
by their contrast with the tone and the demeanor of the worship- 
pers." — (From some admirable remarks of Mr. Lecky on the Test 
Act. History of the Eighteenth Century, vol. i. p. 255.) 

To p. 144. 

Extract from Personal Recollections of Sir Gilbert Scott, p. 28. — 
"In the earliest period to which his memory extended, the clergy 
habitually wore their cassock, gown, and shovel hat, and when this 
custom went out a sort of interregnum ensued, during which all 
distinction of dress was abandoned, and clerics followed lay fash- 
ions. This is the period which Jane Austen's novels illustrate. 
Her clergymen are singularly free from any of the ecclesiastical 
character. Later on the clergy adopted the suit of black, and the 
white necktie, which had all along been the dress of professional 
men, lawyers, doctors, architects, and even surveyors: of men in 
short whose business was to advise." 

To p. 263. 

In the version of the Lord's Prayer in the best authorities of Luke 
xi. 2, 3, 4, " Which art in heaven," "Thy will be done in earth as 
it is in heaven," and "Deliver us from the evil." are omitted. 



INDEX. 



Absolution, use of, in early times, 118, 

128. 
Adiapkorism, 152. 
Altar, 47, 165, 185. 
Ambones, importance of, 50. 
Art, early Christian, 230. 
Athanaric, funeral of, 277. 
Athanasius, 13, 270, 272. 
Augustine, 16. 

Baptism, original, 1, 3. 

— Immersion, 17. 

— Infants', 14, 19. 

— Opinion of salvation by, 12. 
Basilica, 163. 

— its form, 163. 

Binding and loosing, proper meaning 
of, 118, 121. 

Bishops in relation to presbyters, 171. 

Blood of Christ, meaning of, 103, 111. 

Body of Christ, meaning of, in the Gos- 
pels, 93, 100. 

in the Epistles, 100, 103. 

Canons of 1604, 155. 
Catacombs, 224. 

— their Jewish character, 226. 

— pictures, 227. 

— epitaphs, 238. 

Chalcedon, Council of, 293, 295-298. 

— reverses the decree of Ephesus, 302. 
Chancellor, 165. 

Clergy, 171. 

— origin of, 178. 
Collect, origin of, 40. 
Confession, use of, in early times, 129. 
Confirmation, 16. 
Constantinople, Creed of, 300. 

— contents, origin of, 302-305. 
Consubstantiation, 87. 
Cope, 140. 

Creed, Apostles', 243. 

— Nicene, 243, r '269. 
Crosier, 187. 

Cup, withholding of, 83. 
Cyril of Alexandria, 294, 299. 

Deacons, origin of, 173. 
Doxology in Lord's Prayer, 263. 
Dress, ecclesiastical, 151. 



Elements, 30. 

Eleventh Commandment, 318." 
Elizabeth Lutheran ism. 89. 
Ephesus, Council of, 292, 294, 295. 

— decree of, 299, 300. 
Episcopacy, origin of, 177. 
Eucharist, antiquity of, 27. 

— permanence, 34. 
Euphemia, Saint, 293. 
Extempore prayer, 53. 

Father, meaning of, 245. 
Fish, in the Sacrament, 45. 

Goodenough, Commodore, 35. 
Gorham controversy, 9. 
Gregory Nazianzen, 270. 

Heine, poem on the Trinity, 257. 
Holy Ghost, meaning of, 251. 
Homily, meaning of, 50. 
Hypostasis, 255. 

Jerome, 273. 

Jewish High Priest, his dress, 147. 

Jube, origin of, 49. 

Kiss of peace, importance of, 51. 

Lamartine, his speech, 150. 
Litany, its origin, 213. 

— its English translation, 215. 
Liturgy, ancient form of , 52. 
Liturgy of the First Prayer Book of 

Edward VI., 68. 
Lord's Prayer, 267. 

— language of, 268. 

its importance, 56, 57, 260. 

brevity, conclusion of, 264. 

Magic, prevalence of, 76, 77. 
Mass, meaning of, 40. 
Maximus, 273. 

Newman, Cardinal, description of the 

Council of Ephesus, 294. 
Nicaea, Creed of, guarded by Ephesian 

decree, 299. 
altered by Chalcedonian decree, 



326 



INDEX. 



Offering of bread and wine, 54. 
Ordination, words used in, 127. 

— various forms of, 175. 
Ornaments' Rubric, 152, 153. 

Parabolical language, misuse of, 75. 
Passover, 30. 
Pearson, Bishop, 35. 
Pont if ex Maximus, 190. 
Pope, the, compared with the Em- 
peror and the Sultan, 182, 183. 

— Italian prince, 192. 

— dress of, 184. 
Pope, how created, 196. 

— his oracular power, 198. 

— mixed character, 203. 

— name of, 194. 

— postures of, 185, 186, 206, 211, 212. 

— service of, 187. 
Popes, lay, 195-198. 
Position of ministers, 47. 

Real presence, 71. 

— moral and spiritual, 72, 74, 79. 
Red flag, 150. 

Redemption, doctrine of, 222. 
Regeneration, 228. 

Sacrifice, offering of fruits, 54. 

— Pagan and Jewish, 60. 



Scriptures, reading of. 49. 

Shepherd, the Good, 231. 

Son, meaning of, 246. 

Spinoza, 250. 

Spirit, meaning of, 251. 

Sponsors, 24. 

Standing posture, 47. 

Substitution of Christian ideas, 61, 69. 

Table or altar, earliest form, 47. 
Temple, 161. 

Ten Commandments, 306. 
Theodoret, conduct at Council of Chal- 

cedon, 295, 296. 
Theodosius, 275. 

— moderation of, 297. 
Transubstantiation, 81, 82. 

Union of Lutherans and Zwinglians, 
92. 

Vestments (ecclesiastical), 135 

— origin of, 136, 141. 
Vine, the, 236. 

Westminster Abbey, 239. 
Wilhelm Meister, 250. 
Wine, 44. 

— mixed with water, i k 



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